


Faith is Moving Without Knowing

by Disniq



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, Fix-It, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e03 The Rupture, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, canon background characters, canon complaint to s15e13
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:27:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 53,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22972492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disniq/pseuds/Disniq
Summary: He knows he’s fucked up the instant he does.It’s been one thing after another for weeks, months, friggin’ years, and Dean never did learn how to open up until all his bullshit bubbled right over.He doesn’t know why it always seems to be Cas that bears the brunt these days, except that Cas can take it.Only this time he doesn’t.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 133
Kudos: 174





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a cute little hiatus coda post 15x11, alternative title "Fortune favours the brave", where Dean, feeling emboldened by Fortuna's blessing, finally makes a move on Cas. But then I had to go right back to 15x3 because there are ISSUES that need RESOLVING, dammit, and things spiralled wildly out of control and now we're over half way through the hiatus and I'm 10,000 words into whatever this is. Enjoy!

He knows he’s fucked up the instant he does.

It’s been one thing after another for weeks, months, friggin’ years, and Dean never did learn how to open up until all his bullshit bubbled right over. The anger is more familiar than anything else curdling in his stomach, he clings to it like a comfort blanket.

He doesn’t know why it always seems to be Cas that bears the brunt these days, except that Cas can take it.

Only this time he doesn’t.

Cas, who’s seen him at his worst, in Hell, in Purgatory, with the Mark, and stuck with him anyway. Cas, who always insisted he’d be there with Dean after everyone else was dead and gone. Cas, who takes a long, ragged breath, then turns and walks away.

Cas leaves and doesn’t look back.

Cas leaves and Dean can’t blame him.

Cas _leaves_.

Dean makes himself stare at the door for long enough to explain the damp burning feeling behind his eyes.

He fucked up and he can’t take it back.

//

Sam says, “Where’s Cas?”

Dean says, “Gone.”

Sam says, “What happened?”

Dean says, “He left.”

Sam sighs heavily through his nose.

Dean takes another hit of whiskey.

Sam doesn’t push.

Dean almost wishes he would.

//

The thing is, Sam’s little pep talk during the Ghostpocalpse was half true.

He was right; however they ended up where they did when they did, they usually managed to help folks out, save lives. If God wants to break out every ghost and demon they ever sent to Hell, they’ll damn well find a way to shove them back in the hole.

He doesn’t regret that, and even when he’s resented the cost, he did what he could to help people. Dean has always been a good little soldier, he’s been ready to die for the greater good since he was 16.

Except, turns out there is no greater good, just Chuck playing with his life-size action figures and Dean doesn’t know if he’s ever made an autonomous decision in his entire life.

He’s had this existinal crisis before - when he failed to stop his mom from making the deal with Yellow-eyes, when that cupid admitted heaven played matchmaker to guarantee his conception, when Michael looked at him with his fathers face in 1978 and told him, _you can’t fight destiny_.

He’s wondered more than once if any of his choices were his own.

Now he knows for fuckin sure they weren’t.

And he’s furious.

Yeah, they saved some people, sure, great, whatever, but now he can’t trust any of his own thoughts, any of his feelings. The two things he cares most about - family, and helping people - is that really him or was it Chuck?

Would they even still be hunting if Chuck hadn’t kept nudging them back into the game? He thinks of all the times he and Sam disagreed, fought, walked away from each other. Over Dad, because of Ruby, after Lucifer, about Cas, the Campbells, Crowley, Amy, Benny, Gadreel, the Mark, Amara, Mom, the British Men of Letters, Jack… ever since Stanford it’s been one conflict after another and sometimes they have outright hated one another for it.

For the first in a long time, he thinks of Heaven. His personal paradise, and Sam’s, adjacent but so, so different they might as well have been in a galaxy far far away. He doesn’t know if that was even real, used to think it could have been another one of Zachariah’s tricks, but it could have been Chuck fucking with them back then too. Real or not, the look on Sam’s face sure was, when he said he didn’t see family the way that Dean did.

Dean doesn’t know if God has been pushing them together all this time or if he just put bigger and bigger obstacles in their way and they found their way back together every time regardless. He’s terrified that at the first sign of conflict, they’re going to find out they can’t actually stand each other, that they’ll fall apart and nobody will be there to line up their little hamster tunnels.

And Cas, fuck. _Cas_.

God brought Cas back to them over and over and if that’s not suspect then Dean doesn’t know what is. Either he’s been a sleeper agent the whole time, or maybe Chuck just thought he was a good distraction for Dean, keep him off his game, keep him focused on the wrong things.

He wants to cling to Belphagor’s snarky little _didn’t he used to like you guys_ , tries to believe that for the last few years Cas found his way back because he wanted to. But here they are, not a week since God fucked off and abandoned them properly, and Cas has walked away, _moved on_.

Either way, their choices were rigged for maximum entertainment value. Dean’ll never know what their lives could have been without Chuck’s grubby little interfering hands and it’s driving him out of his damn mind.

And if God really has left them to it, if this was the final experiment, complete the maze to close the hellmouth or die trying… well, they did it.

Now what?

//

Dean drowns his sorrows, passes out for a few hours, then drags himself to the kitchen to eat leftovers and pick up a fresh bottle of scotch. Rinse and repeat.

If this is what freedom feels like, it’s underwhelming.

When the fridge finally comes up empty, he takes it as his call to action and drags his sorry ass into the shower. He shaves and dresses in fresh clothes, cleans the empties out of his room, makes his bed and puts on a load of laundry. Then he walks into town to get groceries, because he needs to breathe air that isn’t filtered and he also needs bacon.

Six rashers in and he feel almost like a passable excuse for a human again. Almost. He flicks through the news out of habit, bookmarks a few potential cases. Dean’s tried alcohol and avoidance, he next step is to add in the tried and trusted catharsis of killing things.

He doesn’t even know where they stand on hunting in this bright new world. They haven’t talked about it since they closed the rift. Haven’t talked about anything, really, since their non-conversation about Cas, but especially this. Do they want to keep hunting if they’re really free?

For Dean, hunting is probably the closest he’s got to a purpose. His life is an ongoing shitshow, but if he can help more people than he’s hurt by the end he’ll take it as a win. Dean needs something positive to focus on or he gets lost in all the negatives, a float to keep him from drowning in his own head.

Sam, though… he doesn’t know what Sam thinks about it anymore. For so long Sam wanted out, resented hunting from the moment he learned the monster under his bed was real ‘til the day he left for Stanford. Since the apocalypse, the first apocalypse, when Sam learned that half his college pals were actually demons, he’d seemed to lean away from the apple pie life as far as Dean could tell.

But there are blips, enough that Dean can’t be sure - he’d shacked up with that woman and a dog while Dean was in Purgatory, he’s talked a few times lately about meeting someone else in the life. If this is the epilogue of their story they really should discuss their long-term options, except Dean doesn’t know how to bring it up without sounding pathetically needy.

He’s saved from having to make any big decisions when Sam skulks into the kitchen looking miserable as sin. Sam didn’t push him about Cas, so he doesn’t push about Rowena. That doesn’t mean he can’t play up the obnoxious big brother role to get Sam’s mind on something else.

He picks the most recent bookmark on his tablet and insists on a case, inflates the lifeboat.

They could both use the distraction.

//

The case is weird, but old school weird. Less omnipotent meddling, more the Mean Girls/Twilight crossover nobody asked for.

Dean interrogates a beaver, Sam has a conniption about overbearing suburban parents and they almost stab a cheerleader in broad daylight before they notice her disqualifying braceface. It’s a mess.

Maybe Dean’s just getting old, but the idea of being a highschooler for eternity sounds like an as-yet-undiscovered circle of Hell. Maybe it’s just because he’s running on liquor right now.

They pull the plates, follow Soccer Dad home and end up smack in the middle of some seriously fucked up family drama. The prodigal son is a vampire and mommy and daddy are down to murder his classmates so long as he stills gets into a top 5 college.

The kid - Billy - looks like Jack, a little. The shape of his eyes, the cut of his jawline, the earnest way his eyebrows scrunch together. He yells over his lying mother, “No! Enough!”, and Dean almost expects furniture to go flying across the kitchen.

Then Old Man McKidnapper has the fucking nerve to say, “You don’t have children do you?” and the world tilts anyway.

Dean leans into the breakfast island just to keep his feet, digs his nails into his palm to stay focused on the gun Billy’s mom is still waving, but his mind is racing. 

He thinks of Ben, that year of teaching him how to maintain an engine and talk to girls. He thinks of Claire, and the look on her face when he and Cas gave her the first birthday presents she’d had in years. He thinks of Krissy and her little gang of friends, hunting out there somewhere alone, and Emma, the Amazon child with his DNA who’d lived 16 years in 3 days before she was shot through the heart.

Dean thinks of Jack, and he can tell Sam does too from the sharp inhale behind him, the hand on his shoulder briefly, and he thinks, _No, I don’t, because God made me his puppet and you don’t get a happily ever after when you’re all tangled up in your own strings_.

This family don’t get a happily ever after, either.

Billy takes charge, thankfully, tell his folks exactly what to do then marches them out to the car like he hasn’t just committed himself to die.

“That was very brave of you, Billy,” Sam says. “Standing up to your parents can be hard.”

The kids shakes his head. His mouth, pulled down at the corners, is trembling but his eyes are dry.

“It’s not brave,” he says to his knees. “I fucked up, it’s my responsibility to fix it.”

Dean’s gotta admit, though, the way Billy stoically leads them into the woods is pretty damn brave. He kneels in the scrub, sighs through his nose, jerks his head in a little half nod half shake movement.

“Okay,” he says, voice steadier than Dean’s expecting. “I’m ready.”

Looking down at him, all Dean can think of is Jack kneeling in that graveyard, calm and accepting while Dean pressed a gun to his head, ready to die.

He decapitates the kid from behind.

Sam leans against a tree and doesn’t say a word.

He’s been slightly off the whole case, and Dean couldn’t put his finger on why, but it slots into place apropos of nothing, Sam is acting like him. Or, like he had for their entire time in Harlan - quiet and sullen and vaguely resentful.

They bury the kid and pack up in silence. They’re more than half way back to the bunker before Sam’s sulky window-gazing forces Dean to break the tension.

“Well that was an interesting one.”

It wasn’t, really. After all they’ve been through, this was pedestrian. It does the trick though, gets Sam talking, even if he has changed his tune on Soccer Dad’s parenting methods.

“We’d have done the same,” he says, quietly. “For Jack. If we’d had the chance.”

And… yeah. He’s still angry about Mom, but it’s not like he can dump 100% of the blame on Jack with Chuck yanking all their chains. Jack is family, he’s basically a Winchester, he was bound to make mistakes but he didn’t deserve what it got him in the end.

“Yeah, we would’ve,” Dean says. And then, because Sam still looks like a kicked puppy and this is obviously more about Rowena than it is about Jack, he adds, “Look man, I get it. We have lost way, _way_ too much. And its hard not to feel like just… cashing out.”

Rowena, Ketch and Jack all died last week, for fucks sake. Kevin is an anchorless spirit, and Cas-

“I’ve felt like that,” he admits. Has for a long, long time, but that’s not relevant here. “After Chuck, after the cript.” After Cas left. Again. “But you know what brought me back? You. You did. Saying that what we do still matters. That’s why I wanted to drag us out here, that’s why I wanted to work a case. To save lives, y’know. ‘Cause it is, it’s- its a crap job. We do the ugly thing so that people can live happy.”

“Yeah,” Sam snorts, bitter. “Yeah? Lucky them.”

“Yeah, lucky them,” Dean repeats, because that’s the whole point. “It doesn’t change a thing. We still do the job, but we don’t do it for us. We do it for Jack. For Mom. For Rowena.” He has to breathe, cut himself off. Their list of dead friends is endless, better not fall down that rabbit hole. “We owe it to anybody that has ever given a damn about us to keep putting one foot in front of the other.” If Dean doesn’t have a reason to keep going, he won’t. “No matter what. And hey man, like you said, now that Chuck’s gone we're finally on our own. We are finally free to- move on, y’know?”

 _Move on_ … like Cas thinks it’s time to move on from them, from him.

“I don’t know if I can move on,” Sam says, a little manic now he’s started talking about it, arms flailing. “I can’t forget any of them, Dean. I still think about Jessica- I- I can’t just let that go--”

And, no. No. Dean doesn’t mean to forget about the people they’ve lost. Fuck knows he hasn’t forgotten a single person he’s ever let down in his 40 years. But they should honour them, do good in their memories, make them proud wherever they are.

“Nah man, that’s not what I’m talking about--”

“No- I know, I know, I know. W- What I’m saying is that I, I don’t _feel_ free. What we’ve done, what we’ve lost… Right now _that_ is what I’m feeling and- and sometimes it’s like, sometimes it’s like I- I- I can’t breathe!”

Dean doesn’t know how to say that he knows, that there’s a pit inside him that Sam has only seen glimpses of, that his chest is a slow motion cave in, has been most of his life, crumbling and cracking and collapsing on his heart, his lungs, his damned fucking soul.

Sam slows his panting, rubs his eyes, folds his hands back into his lap.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he mumbles. “Maybe I’ll feel better in the morning.”

Dean can’t stop himself from asking, “And what if you don’t?”

“I dunno.”

Dean doesn’t either.

Guess that’s freedom for you.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was supposed to cover 1505 but this fic continues to get away from me //sigh

Sam doesn’t feel better in the morning.

Neither does Dean, but worrying about Sam is second nature by now and it gives him something to focus on. A reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Even if the best reason he can manage is a steady stream of easy jobs to keep them from wallowing.

They run a few simple salt’n’burns in Arkansas, spend a week in Illinois chasing down a rugaru.

Dean makes jokes about Sam getting flabby and slow until Sammy takes up his morning jogs again. As much as Dean loathes unnecessary exercise, it seems to calm Sam and they both need a bit of their old routine back.

There’s a wraith in Ohio, then a family of ghouls hunkered down in Texas.

They burn through hunts quicker than they have in years, with no impending doom hanging over them, and for four weeks they basically live on the road again.

He feels old and crotchety admitting it but, fuck, Dean hates it. The scratchy bleached sheets on small lumpy beds and mouldy showers with no pressure and miscellaneous carpet stains and no chance for a home-cooked meal. He hates it, but not as much as he hates how empty the bunker is now.

He keeps expecting to see Cas across the kitchen island, bump into Rowena in the library or find Jack in the Dean Cave marathoning iZombie. The bunker is his home, but without them it’s hollow.

Better to stay on the road, stay busy.

//

Donna calls them in on a vamp nest which turns out to be two rival pairs of vetalas in a turf war. It’s interesting enough that Sam doesn’t even complain about not going back to the bunker in between, and Donna insists they go for milkshakes to celebrate after so, win/win.

It’s nice to catch up with Donna after all the shit that’s gone down recently, so they hang around for a few days. Sam cracks a smile or two that don’t look painfully forced and Dean is self-aware enough to know he doesn’t drink as much Johnny Walker if he’s already full of doughnuts.

Since they’re already in Minnesota and half-committed to this impromptu mini-vacation, it makes sense to head out to Sioux Falls and check in with Jody too.

“What bump-in-the-night can I help you boys with this time?” she asks immediately when they pull up a little after 7.

“Nothing,” Sam reassures her, hunching his shoulders in that way he thinks makes him look less threatening. Like Jody hasn’t seen him kick in doors, decapitate vamps in one swing. Like she hasn't also seen him fumble a wine glass in his big stupid fingers. “Social call.”

Jody just cocks her eyebrow at them.

“What,” Dean says. “We can’t just want to see our favourite sheriff?”

“What,” she mocks, hands on her hips now, full mom mode, “you can’t call first?”

Which, fair point, but it’s not like they ever were the call first type. Dean shrugs at her, mostly with his face. She rolls her eyes, her smile playful, and pulls them each in for a hug.

“C’mon, dinner’s at 8,” she ushers them over the threshold. “And I’m gonna tell Donna you said I’m your favourite, by the way.”

“We just saw her,” Dean says. “She says hi.”

“How are the girls?” Sam asks as they hang up their jackets and head into the kitchen.

“Good, they’re good. And I know that for a fact,” she gestures vaguely around, “Because they’re all home. You picked a good night for family dinner.”

“Sounds great,” Sam says at the same time as Dean says, “And I forgot my birth control pills.”

“Hah,” Jody says. “Well. Nobody’s pregnant yet.”

“That you know of,” Claire’s voice calls down the hallway. “If Alex ever actually asks out that doctor she’s always texting me about--”

“Oh shut up you useless lesbian, what do you know!” Alex says, but they’re both smiling as they head into the dining room and start laying out cutlery. 

Patience appears from the kitchen with plates and napkins, and the three of them chatter between themselves while they work.

It’s nice to see.

All of these women have suffered horribly in one way or another, but they’ve found each other, forged their own little family. However shitty the last few months (years) have been for Dean and Sam, the world goes on.

Dean does wonder, vaguely, how much Chuck orchestrated outside of their own little bubble. Did he mark Jimmy Novak as Cas’ vessel knowing how to would destroy Claire’s life? Did he sit there and write out the convoluted mess that was Alex’s nest? Does he handpick psychics like he does prophets, or is that a natural selection thing? Did he nudge Death towards Sioux Falls all those years ago just to drag Jody into the life? Or was it enough to simply create Eve and the alphas, create monsters and then proudly send them off to ruin as many lives as possible?

He’s probably never going to find out for sure, and it’s like a constant scratching at the inside of his skull that even good company and better chilli can't quite distract him from.

//

The girls clear the table, Sam washes and Dean dries the dishes, and Jody puts everything back in it’s place. Then they all crowd into the living room and watch _The Princess Bride_ , because Alex hates scary movies, Jody and Patience like romance and even Dean has to admit it’s a good flick, if only because he and Sam used to re-enact the sword fighting scenes word for word.

Claire rolls her eyes, but she’s hooked by the first ‘ _as you wish_ ’. Sam mouths along to all Inigo’s lines, Dean throws a pillow at him halfway through ‘ _prepare to die’_.

It’s domestic. Soft. Relaxed and cosy and companionable. It’s what the bunker should feel like, has felt like. But it doesn’t anymore.

Alex has work in the morning, and Patience has school so they both wish them goodnight and turn in fairly early. Jody sets them up in the guest room before doing the same. Full of good food and piled with thick blankets, Sam passes out almost immediately.

Dean, though. Dean can’t switch off that itch in his brain.

He sits on the back porch and stares into the garden, phone redundant in his hand. Dean feels comfortable here, wants this kind of life for him and Sammy and--

And Cas.

He knows that Sam has been texting Cas every day. He knows he hasn’t been getting any reply. Dean has been keeping his thoughts on lockdown, or trying to, because he knows he’s never really broken the habit of praying that he developed in Purgatory, but he has no way of knowing how much leaks through and even though they’ve never outright talked about it, Cas sometimes lets slip that he spider-senses way more than Dean is comfortable with.

Like goddamn _Longing_.

He’s possibly overcompensated for that by being harsher in his spoken words than he needed to be.

Being soft is being dead, his dad used to tell him, and Dean has always had that gooey fucking centre. He spent years covering it in layers and layers of snark and attitude and his dad’s too big clothes, but it always seeped through somehow, always in the most inconvenient places.

In the years since John died, his candy coating has dissolved a little, piece by piece. He boxed up dad’s old leather jacket and just never got it out again, bought some nicer suits because he likes dressing up sometimes. He covets their kitchen, learns some new recepies and tries them out, because food isn’t scarce anymore and he wants to share it with his family. He likes watching cartoons and reading old sci-fi and it’s nice to have hobbies outside of the job. He likes the warm feeling in his chest when he’s enjoying good food with his friends, his family.

He’s come to accept those parts of himself that he’d squashed under the pressure of his dad’s expectations, mostly. But some things press all the wrong buttons and he needs to curl up like a hedgehog, become prickly and unapproachable to protect his soft belly.

Things like Cas, who manages to find all kinds of buttons Dean didn't even know he had until they were all lit up like an elevator panel.

It's a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Cas often understands Dean on a deeper level, gets him better than even Sam does sometimes. On the other, Deans a dick who lashes out at people he cares about instead of dealing with his own shit. Which is exactly what he did.

But even knowing he screwed up, Dean finds that he cannot exorcise the nagging feeling that Cas only stuck with them before because Chuck wanted him to. That their relationship can’t be real when it was created as part of that story.

And if God is gone, really gone, then does Dean want to follow the path that God kept pushing him down, or should he be doing the exact opposite?

It’s frustrating and messy, trying to navigate his bundle of issues. He’s spent years trying to untangle what was him and what was his dad, slowly and haltingly, in between keeping the world from nose-diving off a cliff. And now he has to go back, start all over again and work out which knots were tied by the big G-O-D himself.

He looks down at his phone, still no messages, when Claire pokes him with her foot and he nearly dies of a fucking heart attack before he can even start to resolve this whole thing with Cas.

She flops down next to him on the porch steps, doesn’t actually laugh at him but her face is lit up with humour in a way it often isn't. It suits her.

“Texting your secret girlfriend?” she asks.

“Ha freaking ha,” he says, clutching at his metaphorical pearls. “That what you snuck out for?”

The smile drops from her face like a stone. “It’s not- I don’t--”

“Hey,” Dean says, because he was only joking, he didn’t mean anything by it, she doesn’t owe him any kind of explanation. “That’s okay.”

She sighs, “It’s just. Complicated.”

“Yeah,” he says. He knows complicated. “I’m sorry about Kaia.”

Claire kinda half shrugs, half nods, half shakes her head. “Thanks,” she says, quietly, to her knees. Then she side-eyes him, “Sorry about Cas.”

“You talked to him?” he says immediately, then realises how accusing he sounds, and apologises by answering himself. “Of course you talked to him.”

“Yeah. He needed someone to talk to, I think.” Dean swallows past the thick feeling of guilt in his throat. He knows he deserves it. “About the whole Jack thing.” It’s a pleasant evening, not too cold, but she wraps her arms around herself. “And, uh. He’s been a big help with the ‘coming out’ bullshit.”

She actually does the fingerquote thing with her hands, and it so much like Cas it physically hurts. Dean breathes through the ache for a minute, but Claire seems to take his silence for judgement.

“I know, I know it shouldn’t matter, I- I should be past all that crap, I’m 22 for fucks sake--”

“Hey, no,” he says, because she’s spiralling. “This is obviously important to you, Claire. Don’t apologise for that.”

She looks at him for a long moment, then talks into her knees again. “He’s not my dad.”

“But he looks like your dad.”

“He looks like my dad,” she conforms. Swallows. “And… I don’t know what my dad would’ve said about me being gay, not really. I know he loved me, but. Dude was talking to angels, you don’t get much more bible-basher than that, right?”

Yeah, Dean gets it. It’s hard to not want your parents approval. But, still;

“Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

Claire looks at him for a long moment, really looks at him.

And. This is one things he’s pretty sure is his own problem. It’s one thing for God to influence Dean to keep hunting year on year, it’s seems a little lowbrow to make Dean a nervous sweaty mess around cute guys.

He doesn’t do this, as a rule, but if this tangle of issues is all his own, might as well start unravelling.

“My dad caught me once,” he can’t bring himself to say _with a guy_ , which is ridiculous even for him, but she doesn’t overreact, just keeps up that steady gaze and nods ever so slightly to show she's listening. “He- Well, he didn’t take it well,” he huffs a laugh, _understatement_. “It uh. It fucked me up pretty good, for a long time.”

He spent his early 20s sleeping with as many women as possible just to prove himself to his dad, which. Well. He doesn’t think that’s one of the strings he needs to pull on right now.

“Had an uncle, though. He always listened when I needed it,” he gives her a pointed look.

She smiles then. “Yeah, Jody’s been great, and Patience is a good listener. Alex has been, well, _annoying_ but she’s cool with it. And Cas helped.”

Dean honestly isn’t sure how helpful a guy who can accidentally marry a djinn queen for a holy dragon fruit can be when it comes to relationship advice but, sure, okay. Whatever his face says, Claire laughs at him. Then;

“You should talk to him.”

“I know.”

He _knows_.

She gives him that long, flat look again.

“I will.”

He doesn’t.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a day late, sorry! Needless to say quarantine is not going to increase my productivity, so I'll try to stick to the fortnightly updates.
> 
> Enjoy!

They run a quick vamp case on the way back into Kansas, and while they’re wiping down their machetes in an abandoned farmhouse Dean has an epiphany. Two, even.

One;

They’re free, they can choose where they want to go from here.

And, b;

Nothing is going to change unless they make it change.

//

They head straight back to the bunker after that.

So what if it doesn’t feel perfectly homey right now? It’s not going to get any better with them avoiding it. He wants cosy movie nights, he’s gonna have to work for it same as anything else.

He starts by cooking them a proper dinner, burgers and home-made fries, and he even throws in some lettuce and tomato to appease Sammy’s inner health nut.

They potter around for a few days, reorganise the library, clean the kitchen, air out the dungeon. They catch up with Garth, with Bobby 2.0. 

Dean doesn’t call Cas.

What he does find himself doing, instead, inexplicably, is thinking of Metatron of all fucking people. Specifically the first time they met him, when he saved Kevin, before he proved himself to be a total douche canoe.

 _You weigh your choices,_ he’d said. _Ask yourself what is it going to cost to do this? What will the world look like after it’s done?_

He’d been talking about the Trials, known then that Sam would have to die to complete them and had let them dive in blind anyway, the prick. But….

But that’s what Dean find himself doing, weighing his choices.

Dean could call Cas, could apologise and ask him to come home. It wouldn’t cost him much beside his pride.

But if Cas doesn’t answer, like he hasn’t answered Sam-- or worse, if Cas answers and listens and doesn’t come back anyway… Well, then Dean would have to live in this free new world knowing Cas doesn’t want anything to do with him.

Cas left, like everyone always leaves Dean eventually. Cas needs to come back, needs to make that choice on his own. Dean’s not gonna beg.

Instead, he tries not to plan what he’ll say if Cas does come back. _Sorry I was an asshole_ isn’t exactly poetic, but _please don’t leave again_ is way, way beyond pathetic. 

_I love you, I can barely remember a time when I didn't, and I don't know how to handle that at all, and anger is the only way to process this messy, boiling pit of emotions in my chest, and I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry, but I can't promise it won't happen again and--_

It needs some work.

Naturally, this is when they’re thrown head first into Chucks latest idiot-plot.

//

The case in Colorado pings on Charlie’s news tracking program after the third victim, with the keywords ‘woods’, ‘animal attack’ and ‘mountain lion’ because it’s surprising how often Simba gets pegged for supernatural shit. It takes Sam all of 2 minutes to log onto some wildlife charity database and _so, get this_ , zero mountain lion sighting in or around Black Forest in the last 16 years.

Sam packs and Dean’s does a quick supply run (a six pack of beer, liquorice, water for Sammy and enough jerky to cover the 7 hour drive). By the time they’re ready to go, there’s been another attack reported, up to 5 vics, just to make them haul ass through the night.

When they pull up at the local station in the morning, the Sheriff straight up tells them she doesn’t think it was an animal attack, mountain lion, psychotic bear or otherwise, and oh, hey, there’s a witness too! Great!

Ashley is Dean’s favourite kind of witness. She’s sweet and cooperative, and as soon as Sam gets the nurse out of the room, she spills her guts with almost no prompting. She doesn’t go into denial the second he mentions werewolves, and - Even better! - she saw the attacker face to face and she knows his name.

The girl is around Claire’s age, and some part of him wonders if this is what Claire might have been if Cas hadn’t hijacked her dad, if she hadn’t been dragged through the system, if they’d thought to check in on Amelia Novak a little sooner, or left some contact information with them for emergencies.

He leaves Ashley his number, instead.

They visit the Chuckle Brothers who are such caricatures, with their brooding eyebrows and isolated cabin in the woods and _we go out at night sometimes_ , they might as well have little cartoon wolf ears and whiskers.

Dean is 100% down to shoot them when they wriggle their way out of touching the silver pen. Who the hell doesn’t have a phone in 2019? Really?!

Sam thinks it’s a little easy, but, hey, Dean can live with easy.

But then Ashley calls him, sounds shaky and sad. They can help the girl now, and off these creeps later.

They take her to their motel room, book the one next door too.

Ashley asks him to stay and he can’t say no. She’s young and scared and convinced Wolfenstein is gonna come after her.

“Just until I fall asleep,” she says, but 5 hours later she’s still sat up in her bed. Dean has to splash his face with cold water just to keep his eyes open and he didn’t even take any of the good drugs.

He feels old. He feels older when she asks;

“Do you like your job?” with all the innocence of a freshers fair. “I mean, monsters?”

Which is fair. But also, he doesn’t unpack his backstory on any old kid he’s saved from a monster.

“Do I like it?” he asks, she gives him a knowing little smile that says his stalling is wasted on her. “Uh,” - eloquent, Winchester - “I do.”

He does. His life means something when he can save people with it. He’s a damn good hunter, and it might not be the life that he would have chosen if it weren’t for Chuck’s presets, but he enjoys it. Might not be a perfect life, but it’s better than being a desk jockey for 40 years.

“I mean, there’s bad, don’t get me wrong. Lotta bad.” They’ve lost so, so many people, friends, family. But they've helped a lot of people too. “Still feels good to help people, y’know.”

She smiles at him. It feels a little indulgent, the kind of smile you give the kid who wants to grow up to screw caps on toothpaste tubes.

“Did you ever want to be anything else?”

“Jimi Hendrix?” Yeah, he’s old. But still, “No, not really. I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

She says, “That’s nice,” and he only hums because hunting is a lot of things but _nice_ is not usually one of them. It is what he’s used to, though.

Ashley’s head tips back, she looks like she might actually sleep. Maybe she’s worried about nightmares, because she keeps talking even when she’s almost slurring with exhaustion.

“It’s just. All so random. And, and awful.” Her eyes are drooping. “Wouldn’t it be great if it was planned out for you? If everything was already decided?”

And she’s young and traumatised and so tired she probably doesn’t know what she’s saying, but still.

Dean takes great care in keeping his voice low when he says, “No, not really,” but she already asleep and everything goes hazy and then Sam bursts through the door and the girl is gone.

//

It’s easy to track the wolves down because they took Ashley back to their own house, which is stupid. Even stupider is the fact that they took her and tied her up instead of outright eating her, and they’re arguing really fucking loudly about it when Dean and Sam pull up.

“Bet you’ve even got real silver bullets in that gun,” says Thing One, snarling at Dean like the badly drawn cartoon character he is.

Thing Two is even worse, halfheartedly fighting Sam off while waxing poetic about how none of this would have happened if it weren’t for his brother’s hankering for human hearts.

Andy snatches Sam’s gun, dramatically shoots Josh and then himself and everything feels wooden and staged except Ashley, who plays the perfect traumatised victim right up until she trips and fucking impales herself on a fucking hunting trophy.

Dean has ten whole seconds to try to process what the _fuck_ just happened before the jig is up, Ashley pulls herself free, flashes her white eyes and surprise, she’s actually Lilith.

“No. You’re dead,” Sam says, like that ever means anything to them.

“ _Was_ dead, yeah,” she sighs. “In the Empty, sleeping the big sleep. Until the boss brought me back.”

“The boss? Lucifer?”

“God.” She rolls her eyes so hard her eyes almost white-out again. “I was supposed to get rescued, and in a moment of sweet relief seduce Dean, blah, blah, blah.”

And _WHAT_ , this kid could be his damn daughter.

She gives him a once over, assessing, then says, “Obviously that’s not happening now, so,” and gestures at the bloody antler holes in her chest like that’s the major problem here. “Oh well.”

“So Chuck sent you to kill us?”

“No, I wish.” she laughs. “That’s not how this story goes.”

Dean’s still reeling from the revelation that not only is Chuck still around, but that he apparently thinks Dean is the kind of creep who would still bang a 20 year old in his 40s, but he gets the gist. She’s here for the equalizer, because Chuck’s too much of a pussy to come get it himself. Wolf Laurel and Hardy were just a lure.

Lilith obviously isn’t impressed with their attitude or their updated arsenal, because she blasts them across the room and Sam is knocked out cold.

She stalks across the cabin towards Sammy’s unconscious body and Dean knows it’s a dumb idea even before she promises him slow torture but he can’t let a demon get their claws into Sam again so he lies to her anyway.

He feels dirty letting her into baby, the sulfur stink is gonna linger for weeks. The cabin in the woods was a good 40 minutes from town and Dean valiantly manages to pretend he can’t see her staring at him like a predator for 15 before he has to break the silence.

“Why?” he ask, because it’s the only thing running around his head. “Just, why?”

She offers up some glib remark about hair, but he’s not in the mood to let it go.

“No, why are you doing this? You even said yourself, this is stupid.”

“It is! Do you think I want to be here?” And Dean hasn’t thought about it to be honest, she did her fair share of screwing with them back in the day. “I died to free Lucifer from the cage. I had to die for what I wanted most. Then you two went and screwed it all up.”

Dean is pretty sure that one isn’t on them. He knows angels and demons were conspiring all over the place to pop that particular box. Him and Sam were puppets then, too, they just didn’t know how high up the strings went.

“Yeah,” he says, because if God gave Lilith orders she must know more than they do about how all this bullshit works. “But that was- that was God too, right? I mean, just another one of his stories?”

“Yeah, well,” she smiles sweetly, “I can’t hurt him. But I can hurt you.”

Which is fair, he supposes. But it's also not an answer. The Lilith who obliterated that police station full of people back in Monument, Colorado was not the kinda demon to stage a none-lethal theatrical performance just to get a gun back. Dean needs to measure up her strings.

“I don’t get it, why the games?”

“What?” she mocks. “You didn’t like the part where you bonded with the victim?”

Of course her whole guiding light speech was Chuck’s purple prose, of course it was. Nobody writes clunky dialogue like him.

“He’s not exactly Shakespeare,” Lilith complains. “I had to listen to his whole, quote, _writing philosophy._ And his very weird, _very_ pervy obsession with you.”

The way she says _pervy_ makes every muscle in his back tense up at once, lights up an anxiety leftover from the days of trailing after his dad in the wrong kind of bars, too young and much too pretty.

He remembers flicking through those Supernatural books, back when Chuck was just a weirdo with an open word document. They’d only picked up a few, but they’d gone into an awful lot of detail about Dean’s various sexcapades, with Cassie, with Lisa. It’d verged on bodice ripping, frankly.

Thinking of Chuck back then makes him think of Cas back then, too. Castiel, Angel of the Lord, turning his back on Heaven for humans, for the Winchesters, for _Dean_. Cas, the Cas who’d looked God in the face and said _we’re making it up as we go._ Even if they'd only thought he was a drunk prophet at the time, that's always been Dean’s go to argument for free will.

That’s probably the first time Dean fell in love with him, a little, and Chuck must’ve laughed himself sick then spent the next decade killing and reviving Cas just to fuck with him.

The motel is suddenly right there, and any plan Dean might have had to stall her by driving around the block a few times are moot. He takes his time parking, pretends to think about which door is theirs, fumbles the key on purpose. Anything to slow them down because he’s unarmed and his ribs are bruised and his only hope now is to hold out long enough for Sam to catch up.

“So. Here we are,” when they finally get through the door, and she really has that sweet, mocking tone on lock. “Now be a god boy and show me that big gun.”

Dean slinks half way to the bedside cabinet before he bites the bullet and pulls his trump card. “You know what, that’s on me, I forgot. We didn’t actually bring it. Sorry.”

He gets a nice little slice across the face for his trouble.

Lilith waxes poetic about the lamest form of torture, like she’s forgotten she delivered Dean’s immortal soul to Hell. He reminds her - _“Go to Hell.”_ \- and she doesn’t like that at all.

She almost slices Dean’ nipple off in her little hissy fit and then Sam finally, _finally_ crashes through the door and pops her with the demon trap bullet, right in the forehead, BANG!

“You only killed me because I let you,” she says, before they can even enjoy the moment. Goes all demon-eyed and starts shaking the whole friggin motel.

It’s a compelling argument, and there’s nothing in the room they can’t afford to lose so they hustle out of there. Unfortunately, she’s eaten her wheaties this morning and whatever boost Chuck’s given her means she removes the magic bullet and turns the tables on them in record time.

Dean hates being trapped while the villain monologues.

“See, you boys left that room so fast you had no time to grab anything. So. The gun was never there. Would you really take something like that home? I mean, what if you _needed_ it.”

If there’s one thing he hates more than villain monologues, it’s being headshrinked during a villain monologue. Worse, she’s one hundred percent nailed his thought process.

“So if it’s not here… and it’s not in the bunker…. Hmmmm.”

Dean stares ahead, tries not to give himself away, but the second she lays eyes on Baby he knows it’s over.

“Go ahead and take it,” Sam says, not even convincingly. “We’ll get it back.”

“Will you,” the bitch smirks, then Mt. Doom’s the fucking thing, thanks them and vanishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a [Tumblr](http://disniq.tumblr.com) if anyone wants to say hi.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, hope everyone is coping in isolation! 
> 
> Since this is now around 10,000 words long, with the next 5000 drafted, and the main pairing haven't so much as been in a room together yet, Imma go ahead and tag this slow burn.

So.

Lilith is alive again.

Sam’s been keeping quiet about his freaky psychic nightmares, and God Almighty himself is gunning for another Winchester vs. Winchester title match before he ends the world.

It’s like the last 12 years have been reversed in an instant, and it’s somehow even worse than that time a witch made him relive puberty.

Sam’s mood has done a complete 180, he’s more engaged than he has been for weeks, with his annoying determined face and his books spread all over the tables, half-drunk water bottles dotted between. Any positivity Dean has been clinging to evaporates quickly now that he doesn’t need to keep Sam’s spirits up too.

Capital-G God wants them dead via murder suicide, their only potential weapon against him was destroyed and did he mention, _GOD wants them dead!_

Dean can’t get past that, however much they both kind of suspected the cosmic bullshit wasn’t really over. Whatever else they’ve taken out is nothing to this, and what's worse is that apparently Chuck can just handwave any one of their old Big Bads back into existence as his pleases too. 

The cherry on top of the universes shittiest pie is the tiny little bubble of hope he'd been harbouring, nestled neatly beneath the churning anxiety in his gut. Despite himself, despite the constant nagging feeling that Chuck would be back eventually, Dean’d started to desperately hope that it really was over, that he was just being paranoid, that they could move on. Now that the bubble has burst, Dean hates himself for even entertaining it.

He’s never been less happy to be right.

Sam, though, seems vindicated, glad that his instinct was on the money and happy to move on to problem solving.

Like they can research a way around fucking God.

Dean isn't going to waste his time.

Dean is going to sit in his hotdog pyjamas, eat dry cereal and watch scooby-doo.

//

Dean manages three whole days in his room before Sam calls him out on it.

He wouldn’t have come out at all except his Capt'n Crunch is empty. Sam is camped at the kitchen table waiting to ambush him, and he doesn’t even appreciate a good cereal box joke. Loser.

But Sam is kinda spacey, keeps looking at the doorway. He only vaguely disapproves in Dean’s general direction, then he slams his laptop shut and goes for a run.

Which is just fine with Dean, because it means he can grab a bottle of scotch and a fresh box of crunchy, chocolatey goodness without Sam’s furrowed eyebrows and judgemental sideburns following him across the kitchen.

He checks the phones on the way past out of habit, but he needn’t have bothered.

Some small part of him is disappointed, even though he should know better.

Cas still isn’t answering his phone, that’s not exactly new. Freedom might be an illusion, but some things don’t change. Sam texts him the need-to-knows, tries to call him every evening when he thinks Dean’s passed out.

Subtlety isn’t one of Sammy’s strengths.

Case in point; Dean hasn’t even got his headphones back on before Sam barges into his bedroom, barks, “Library, now,” and leaves again without closing the door.

If he’d mentioned they had company, Dean might have put on his big boy pants. As it is, he’s ambushed by a flickering, spectral Eileen in his dead guy robe.

“What the Hell,” he mutters under his breath.

He guesses a benefit of lip reading is that it works when people are trying to whisper, though, because Eileen just shrugs at him and replies, “That’s what I was just telling Sam.”

“Wait. So you were in Hell?” Dean says. There’s a pattern emerging here. God really is a capricious dick. “But you didn’t make a deal, you were innocent! You been down there this whole time?”

“The hellhound that killed me,” she only hesitates a little, “kinda dragged me there.”

“Damn,” Dean says, because there really is nothing he can say that makes a tour in Hell any better.

“Yeah,” Sam jumps in, obviously thinking along the same lines. “She, uh, escaped when Chuck blew the doors open and- and then--”

“I hauled ass.” She looks pale, even for a ghost. “Far as I could.”

“So by the time we got the barrier up, you were long gone,” Dean guesses.

Eileen nods. “I’ve been trying to get you guys to see me for… a while now. This whole ghost thing doesn’t exactly come with a handbook.”

She almost smiles, then goes a serious and sombre as a, well. Ghost.

“Look, I don’t know how all this works but I know how it ends. We,” she emphasises, gestures at herself, “go crazy. We _hurt people_. I can’t stay here, and I won’t go back down… _there_. So I thought- you guys know angels. Maybe, if you put in a good word y’know… _up there_ \--” and Dean can’t let that hope in her face grow any more.

“You know, Eileen, even if we did it wouldn’t matter.” Sharp and short. “Souls from hell can’t go to heaven. Friend of ours just found that out. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” she says, slowly, blinking furiously to hold back tears that can’t physically form. “Me too.”

“So,” Sam says, loudly. “Eileen, why don’t you make yourself at home while we, uh, work out a way to help you. Dean, can I talk to you for a second.”

He basically frog-marches Dean down the hall.

“Nice man, real sensitive.”

“What? You want me to sugar coat it?”

“Of course not, but, Dean--” and Dean isn’t getting this pussyfooted approach. They don’t have many options here. Kevin might have been happy to risk the open world, but Eileen clearly isn’t, and who are they to condemn her back to Hell.

“Maybe option b,” he insists. “We have any soul catchers?”

It’s not a great solution, they both know that. But it’s something. It’s better than the alternative.

Sam sighs, long and loud through his nose.

“This blows, I get it. I don’t make the rules.”

“Alright,” Sam agrees finally. “Look, if- if its what Eileen wants then we can go to Rowena’s place and look for a crystal. Been meaning to do that anyway since…”

Since she died for their sins and left her little protégé Sam-witch all her worldly belongings, yeah.

“Great,” Dean says, turning back towards his room. “Do that.”

“Wait wait wait. You not coming with?”

“Its a milk run,” Dean shrugs. He hardly needs to get dressed just to go pick up some books.

Sam sighs again.

“You know what Dean,” Sam starts, _here we go._ “Ever since God got back you’ve been acting like there’s nothing we can do, like nothing matters. We can do this! This matters!”

And maybe it matters to Sam, but Dean can do without the witchy shit today, thanks.

“Which is why you’re gonna kick it in the ass.”

//

Sam heads out within the hour, Casper flickering along behind him. Dean’s not really clear on this whole unanchored spirit thing works, but it’s not his problem. Right now, his only pressing concern is which Scooby movie to watch first.

He settles on _Ghoul School_ , classic, and since Dean has the place to himself for once he brings his laptop and a couple of beers to his favourite spot in the library, props his feet up on the table and settles in.

 _The Reluctant Werewolf_ is next, and he's considering watching the 2002 live action Scooby just for the sheer genius of Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne before he decides it’s probably close enough to noon to treat himself to another bowl of cereal. He might even put milk in it. Really indulge.

It’s pure luck that the phone rings before he’s done more than stand up. They keep the phones in the centre of Bunker, but for all that the corridors echo and the doors creak, sound doesn’t travel well between rooms down here. He wouldn’t have heard it from his bedroom.

When he eventually untangles the chargers and finds the phone, it's marked FBI so he answers it without thinking.

“This is Assistant Director Kaiser.”

“Uh,” the guys says, obviously not expecting an actual answer.

And that's when it clicks because Sam shouldn’t need to Fed up to get in to Rowena’s apartment and Dean only knows one guy who consistently pings people's weird radar. Cas.

Typical. Radio silence for weeks and then he only gets in touch because of a job.

“This is Sheriff Alden Roy," the guy on the line says. "Just, uh, checking on Agent Worley.”

“Would you put my Agent on the phone please,” Dean says, hopes he sounds like an asshole boss and not just an ass.

“He, uh… wants to talk to you,” he hears the Sheriffs say, muffled. There’s a pause that feels like a lifetime, then;

“Hello.”

“Cas.” Still alive then. Still working cases, just not with them. “Sam’s been trying to call you.”

“I know,” he says, and doesn’t elaborate at all. _Dick_.

“Did you check his messages?”

“No.”

“Smart, why would you?” Frustration is building in his chest, itching up his neck. “Look. I don’t know if you care or not but God-- Chuck is back on the board. So watch your back. And check your damn messages!”

Dean hangs up before Cas can answer, before he can say something stupid just to make the balloon in his lungs pop so he can breathe again. He throws the phone down into the pile, kicks at the console and stomps back to the library.

Stupid fucking angel, he knows damn well how texting works and chose to ignore Sam anyway. Chuck could have gone after him at any time and he wouldn’t have had a clue, all because he was so caught up in avoiding Dean. It’d be on him, if Chuck had taken Cas out while he was out there alone because of Dean’s bullshit. It’d have been his fault.

Screw food, Dean heads for the liquor instead. A couple fingers of whisky don’t stop the anger bubbling in his throat, boiling in his blood, but it does clear his head enough that he knows he’s being irrational. Cas is obviously fine without them, without _him_.

Cas wants to play hunter on his own, good for him. He’s not Dean’s responsibility, he can make his own damn choices.

Dean downs another drink, forces the muscles in his shoulders to relax and goes for his cereal even though he isn’t hungry anymore.

Except for how Cas _is_ his responsibility. Cas has chosen them over Heaven over and over, has given up so much to stay on Earth with them. It was Dean’s job to make sure Cas knew what he was doing, not to lash out and push him away, alone and vulnerable.

He’s considering sulking off to his bedroom again when Eileen the friendly ghost appears in kitchen doorway and gives him a better distraction.

“It’s Sam.”

//

Dean hates witches.

Whatever good Rowena might have done recently, it’s massively outweighed by the hordes of power hungry hags a little too liberal with their bodily fluids. It’s gross, vicious and nine times out of ten it’s evil to boot.

By the time Dean gets to the apartment building there’s also voodoo involved, which is just peachy. Luckily, Eileen engages in a bit of ghost on ghost violence, and for all that talk about needing a handbook, she sure seems to have got the hang of zip-zapping about. It gives Dean and his witch killing bullets a shot, and he puts it through the puppetmaster.

After that it’s an all out brawl, messy and brutal. Dean finds out what a heart attack feels like before Sammy does his Ginger Jr. whammy on mommy bitch and, okay, maybe the exception proves the rule because Dean definately does _not_ hate Sam witching it up to give her a taste of her own hexbag.

Dean staggers up, over to where Eileen is spirit-wrestling with Evil Blonde the Younger. She points Dean towards the witchskin rug and then helpfully distracts the spirit long enough for him to douse the body in absinthe and get his lighter to actually light. Witch Lite goes up in seconds, praise be to Rowena’s expensive taste. 

They all stand there and pant at each other for a minute.

“You okay?” Dean asks the room in general, which is stupid because Sam is heavy breathing behind him and Eileen is still technically dead.

She nods anyway, smile a little brittle.

“Are you?”

“Sure,” he quips without thinking. “What’s a little more heartache on top of everything else?”

Eileen kinda frowns at him like he’s a sack of sad puppies or something, makes eye contact with Sam over Dean’s shoulder and oh no no no, this is not going to become a thing.

“No, really, I’m good,” he insists, then heads back down the stairs to the car.

//

Dean drives them home, somehow focusing on the road and not Eileen stuttering in and out of focus in the rearview or Sam fiddling with the spell and tapping his fingers on his knee in Dean’s peripheral.

They make in home at any rate, and Sam launches immediately into ingredient gathering. Within ten minutes, he leads Eileen to the main bathroom.

Dean grabs a six pack and slumps down in the war room as soon as they disappear. The glow from the map table is enough to light the room without being too bright, and Dean suddenly has a banging headache to counterpoint the lingering throb in his chest.

He finishes his first beer, opens a second.

Two sets of footsteps echo down the hall, so he guesses the hoodoo worked. Good for them. Sam deserved something good for a change, and Eileen sure didn’t deserve Hell. They needed the win.

 _If it even is a win_ , that squirmy thing in his head whispers. _If this isn’t just another maze._

He should go to bed, before he slips full tilt into those miserable, inescapable thoughts. He should at least pretend to sleep in lieu of the real thing, but he can’t make himself get up. He starts on a third beer, no, wait, there’s three empties already on the table, this must be his fourth.

Dean’s frowning at the bottles when Sam trots back up from quarters. He looks surprised that Dean is still there, which is fair considering how much time Dean spent avoiding him lately.

“How’s Eileen?”

“She’s, uh. She’s asleep,” Sam says. “She had a big day.”

And yeah, that first resurrection is a doozy. But still;

“Well, so did you.” Dean rolls one of his last two beers across the table to Sam. He’s earned it. “Hexbags. New body. So what, you some kinda witch now?”

“Hah,” Sam smiles at his knees. “Nah. I got lucky.”

“Yeah,” if he says so. “I just wish we knew about that spell for mom.”

It would have saved them so much pain; him and Sam, and Jack, and. And Cas. But what’s done is done, now.

“You did good today man. I did jackshit.”

Sam huffs. “You killed a witch. Saved my ass.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Eileen saved him first. He must look particularly unconvinced, Sam puts on his best bitchface.

“You know what,” he says, somewhere between stern and sympathetic. “I been thinking about something you said. About how we don’t make the rules.” He pauses, but Dean just raises his eyebrows, _Go on._ “And you’re right. We don’t. We never have! But that doesn’t mean we can just give up--”

“Oh come on, man--” He's not _giving up_. He just isn't feeling it right now, okay, and it's not like he's had a break in 10 damn years. He's entitled to a few days to fucking process or whatever.

“We have moves to make here, Dean--” Dean snorts, he can't help it. What can they do that _God_ won't see coming? “We _do_! I mean- you think Chuck _wanted_ me to shoot him? Of course not!”

“You sure about that? Maybe it was part of the plan you know.” But maybe Sam doesn’t know. Maybe Sam doesn't get just how much this is fucking Dean up. “That’s the thing, man! I don’t know what’s God and what isn’t. And its driving me crazy!”

Sam looks at him like he knows exactly where Dean is stuck on this, and that’s almost worse than Sam not knowing. He says, gently;

“All I’m saying is well find a way to beat him. We will! I dunno how yet but we will because we’re the guys who break the rules.”

True enough. That’s sort of what got them into this mess.

“But I can’t do it without you. I cant,” Sam says, painfully earnest. “Just like I couldn’t do it today without you. I need my brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](http://disniq.tumblr.com)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, just a heads up that this chapter contains a **TW for suicidal thoughts** , which is canon-typical for Dean. It's vague and evasive, because it's Dean's headspace, but it there so take care of your triggers babes

Eileen sleeps and sleeps, and sleeps.

Dean leaves Sam fretting in the war room and passes out himself for a few hours of blessed oblivion, and then he takes a long shower because he spent a week in his pyjamas before his emergency witch fight and he’s rank.

He shaves too, and puts clean clothes on. Fresh as a daisy. Or whatever. He’s suddenly ravenous for food that isn’t dried and boxed, so he heads towards the kitchen. As he gets close, though, he can hear Sam’s footsteps still pacing the length of the library, occasionally taking a detour circuit of the war room or circling the barracks corridors.

“Sam,” he says from the doorway. “C’mon man, relax. You want a burger?”

“No thanks, I’m good,” Sam mumbles, doesn’t stop moving.

“Yeah, you look aces, Sam. Really rockin’ the crazed hermit vibe.” Sam finally looks at him. “Come on. Eat. Rest. Eileen’s a tough cookie, she’ll be fine.”

“That’s not--” Sam starts, then cuts himself off with a sigh that makes his whole upper body deflate. “Fine.”

“You really that worried?” Dean asks, turning to check Sam is actually following him. “You said she was good last night, right?”

Dean turns the grill on to preheat and then rummages through the freezer for the burgers he knows he bought. Fresh made is better, but he really doesn’t feel like going into town for ground beef, so frozen are gonna have to do.

“Yeah,” Sam sighs, then says again more firmly. “Yes. But. This was powerful magic, Dean, and- and I--”

“Worried your Sea Monkey isn’t gonna find her land-legs?” He says, finally fishes the box out and takes it to the counter. “Yeah man, I get it.”

Boy, does he get it. Whenever something good happens, it just starts the countdown in Dean’s head, _tick tick tick_ , the tension and his blood pressure steadily increasing until the other shoe drops and they get screwed all over again.

They don’t get to be happy long term, they never have.

“Dean,” Sam says, that soft stern voice he uses when he thinks Dean’s fragile.

Dean slams the patties down harder than necessary to break them apart, sticks them on the grill while Sam frowns at him. It’s frustrating, this kiddie glove approach. Sam, more than almost anyone else, has seen Dean’s absolute rock bottom. And this? This ain’t that. Not even close.

At his worst, Dean wanted to… Well. Let’s say he took a few unnecessary risks and if he’d heroically taken a hit to save someone who deserved to live, he’d have been okay with it.

This is different. Dean doesn’t want to _die_ , exactly, he’d just quite like to _not exist_ for a while. To go to sleep and maybe just not wake up. Anything to catch a break. Anything to go a month, a goddamn week without something huge and awful and inescapable happening.

“We will find him,” Sam says, eventually, all forced calm and placating hands. The grill starts spitting, Dean flips the burgers. “And we will work out a way to beat him. We _will_. We just need to focus, work together--”

“We don’t need to find him, Sam,” Dean snaps. “He wants us dead, he’ll come to us. I don’t know about you but I ain’t exactly itching to hurry that along.”

“Well then what does it matter?” Sam doesn’t quite shout, but it’s a close thing. Dean turns off the grill like he hasn’t noticed. “If our options are to take a chance now and maybe he kills us if we fuck it up, or hide away for a bit longer binging netflix and dry cereal until he’s _ready_ to come for us later, I know where I stand on that!”

Dean grabs a plate, doesn’t look at where Sam is perched against the table, arms crossed and chin raised.

There are four patties, one each for him, Sam and Eileen, and one for leftovers. He’d usually offer to split the last one with Sam, old habits, but he’s not feeling particularly generous right now. Dean uses the spatula to poke two of the burgers on his his plate, leaves two on the grill.

“I used to think you were standing there with me,” Sam says, finally.

Dean doesn’t look at where he knows Sam will have the puppy eyes on full blast, the manipulative little shit. He doesn’t even bother to grab buns, or cheese, or sauce. He just heads straight to his room with his plain ass frozen beef.

It’s only after he slumps onto his bed that he realises he also forgot a fork.

//

Dean eats with his fingers and then has a power nap which is absolutely not because he was laid on his bed sulking at the wall for so long he fell asleep without noticing.

Either way, his phone tells him it’s 0300 and the benefit of an underground bunker with no natural light is that there’s no reason not to get up for ice cream at three in the morning.

Hoping nobody else is up, he brushes down his rumpled clothes once and eases his door open slowly.

He lucks out - the corridor is empty, Sam’s bedroom door is firmly shut, and in the library his scattered research books have been piled haphazardly in the middle of a table.

Excellent.

Dean can drown himself in Ben and Jerry’s without having another one-sided heart-to-heart.

Except, no, of course he can’t.

Eileen is sat at the kitchen table, tapping away at Sam’s laptop.

“Hi,” she says, gives him a little wave.

Dean waves back, and goes straight to the freezer. There’s some cookie dough in here somewhere, he knows-- _Ahah_!

He doesn’t bother with a bowl, just grabs a spoon, takes the whole carton and sits across from Eileen. He figures a conversation is coming, and Sam might have picked up some sign, but Dean hasn’t. The least he can do is make it easy to read his lips.

But Eileen just keeps click-clacking away while Dean opens his ice cream and digs in. He manages about half before the _click click_ starts to grate. He makes eye contact with her over the laptop screen and says, “Not tired?”

“I was dead,” she shrugs. “That’s enough rest, don’t’ya think?”

“Hmm,” Dean nods.

Hell isn’t exactly restful, but he knows what she means. Dean struggled to sleep after he got out, after Cas _dragged_ him out, between the nightmares and the instinctual fear of waking up in a box again. There’s nothing he can say, no advice he can give her because he pushed all that shit down until it burst from his seams and then he stitched himself back up and kept going.

“Thank you,” she says, sincerely. “For helping me with the ghost witch.”

“You saved my bacon first, call it even.” Then he tries, “I, uh. I suck at this sort of thing, but Sammy would say it helps to talk about it.”

Eileen sighs, nods. Closes the laptop and gets up. Dean thinks she’s going to leave, show him what she thinks of his shitty second-hand advice, but she just grabs a bottle of the good scotch and two glasses. She pours them both a measure, shoots hers back and pours another.

“He did say that,” she tells him. “But I can’t. It’s too much.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah, it is.”

“He means well,” Eileen smiles.

Yeah, he usually does. But Sam always did have hang ups when people’s coping methods were different to his. Sam talks about his shit when he’s good and ready, not a minute before, but god forbid other people need processing time. It’s one of the things Sam inherited from Dad, _Do as I say, not as I do_ , and they were both stubborn enough to keep pushing and pushing well after something should be left alone. Dean just needs to wallow sometime, to think.

He doesn’t need to get into that with the woman Sam almost maybe had a thing for a few years back, though.

“Some things you just need to deal with alone,” he says instead, and he doesn’t know if he’s still talking about Hell.

“Maybe,” Eileen says, smiles like she knows he’s being a terrible hypocrite and pats his hand where it rests on the table. “But that advice goes both ways, if you ever need to talk.”

“Uh, sure. Thanks,” he says, knowing full well he won’t take her up on the offer. He grabs his spoon and his ice cream soup, melted now. “I’m gonna head back to bed. ‘Night.”

//

This is exactly why he keeps an emergency stash of booze and snacks in his bedroom. Dean has enough beer and jerky to last him a week, but he only makes it about 30 hours before he’s climbing the fucking walls.

Between Sam’s pushy hopefulness and Eileen’s casual empathy, Dean feels like he must have a neon sign on his head that says _I’m not handling this well_. He’s handling it just fine, he thinks, considering what _this_ is.

Dean doesn’t know what they expect him to do. There is no escaping this, no deals to be made or tricks they can pull. He doesn’t know what to fucking do.

He does know he can’t stay here and be mothered to death on two fronts. Handling Sam’s aggressive concern is second nature, but Eileen is a wildcard and Dean doesn’t fancy his chances against the both of ‘em.

All he’s done for weeks is migrate between his bed and the kitchen, and now he can’t even do that without instigating a capital-T _Talk_. He needs to get out, catch his breath and gather his thoughts in peace.

Any excuse will do, but nothing is pinging any alarms. He sneaks off for a shower, goes the long way when he hears giggling in the kitchen, and scrubs himself down so fast he can’t even enjoy the water pressure.

Dean’s itching out of his skin by the time he gets back, enough that he resorts to straight up scrolling his national news app. No animal attacks, no missing organs, no weird bites.

A woman is missing, though. _Raptured_ says the clickbait, and if it were five or six years ago he’d believe it but not with the state of Heaven now. Still, it’s as good a reason as any to stretch his legs.

Dean polishes off his beer and follows the sounds of giddy flirting down the hall. The smell of food hit’s him before he rounds the corner. It smells greasy and sweet and awesome, the minute he crosses the threshold Sam drops some pancakes on the counter.

“Oh ho ho,” he says. “Look who’s alive!”

“Yeah,” Dean answers. “Mostly.”

“You hungry? We have eggs, pancakes. Bacon?”

“Is that real bacon?” Dean asks, because like a week ago Sam was having kittens about going vegetarian. “’Cause you know, you--” but Sam looks kinda squirrelly and there’s only one thing that makes Sam crave greasy breakfast.

“Are you two hung over?”

Eileen smirks at him. “We might’ve gotten just a little carried away with the--”

“Margaritas,” Sam whispers.

“-margaritas last night.”

“Oh ho,” Dean laughs. Four days in and she’s already got Sammy on tequila and real meat products. Give her a few weeks and she might get that stick all the way out of his ass. “I knew I liked you.”

“Sit,” she says, gestures at the heaps of food. “Eat.”

“No, no. I, uh, can’t--”

“W-w-wait, wait,” Sam trips over his words. Maybe he’s not hung over, maybe he’s still half-drunk. “You’re turning down bacon?”

“Mmhmm. Yes,” Dean says.

He’s tempted for a moment to abandon this none-case and stay, tuck in to this amazing breakfast and then research together, the three of them. Except, it’s not Eileen he thinks of when he thinks _the three of them_. It’s Cas, and Cas isn’t here. Even if he were, he wouldn’t be cheerfully frolicking in the kitchen at breakfast, he’d be scowling into his awful black coffee and grunting at Dean's nonsense.

Fuck, Dean misses him. It wouldn't be the same. And he can’t stay here and ruin Sam’s nice morning, either.

“Yeah, actually I’m just heading out.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “Just give us a second to wrap this up and we’ll come with you--”

“No, no. No, I’m good,” Dean insists. “You guys stay and eat. Smells terrific.”

He gives Eileen another smile, and leaves. But Sam catches him in the hall.

“Hey, Dean, wait,” he reaches out for Dean’s arm, sounds worried. “Just- hold on, slow down.”

“I’m good,” Dean says again. If he says it enough maybe it'll mean something. “I’m good.”

“You’re good? What does that mean you’re--”

“It means I gotta get out of here,” Dean admits. “I gotta take a drive, clear my head.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah, you know. You and Eileen are having fun. I don’t wanna spoil that, y’know.”

That gets Sam on board. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Go, go. Eileen and I have stuff to do.”

“Yeah, I bet you do,” Dean teases. They’re cute together.

Even if Sam insists, “It’s not like that. I meant looking for Chuck and Lilith and, uh-”

“Uh huh, sure.”

Sam sighs. “Just. Call me if you need me.”

“I always do.”

//

Texhoma is a small, quiet. Three roads in to town, a roadhouse at either end and the sheriff’s department slap bang in the middle.

Dean sure hopes they don’t get a lot of missing persons, because the Sheriff himself is a quirky little dude who seems awful happy to write Angela Sullivan off as a runaway and leave it at that.

Sheriff Dillon does give Dean two useful pieces of information though. One, Angela has no living family and no permanent ties in town. Perfect victim, not many people will miss her. And B, the girl who reported her missing is probably going to be at Swayze’s Bar.

He also gets a bit flirty in the weirdest way, which Dean is gonna take as a compliment even though he isn't interested right now. He’s still got it.

Swayze’s parking lot at isn’t exactly busy, but the bar itself is packed. Makes sense in a town this small; folks can get hammered and then walk the two blocks home.

The waitress is helpful, if a little handsy, and she talks Dean out of his phone before she tries to talk him into her pants.

Oh yeah, he’s definitely still got it.

He's still not interested but, well. He’s here, and he has to wait for Sally to show anyway, he might as well enjoy it. This is his kind of place, rustic and vaguely rowdy, cowboy hats in every direction. The house band is even decent.

Dean turns to get a better look and that’s when he clocks the singer.

Lee Fuckin Webb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, find me on [Tumblr](http://disniq.tumblr.com)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, I was not feeling the last update, I finished the next one and it was not flowing, so I have replaced that chapter with this one, and I might rework the flashback into a coda once I've finished school in a few weeks
> 
> Here is the long awaited 15x07 chapter, and it is a long one!

“Dean fuckin’ Winchester!”

They size each other up for a minute before they both crack and then they’re hugging like it’s not been 16 damn years.

“I’ll be damned, man, come in here!” Lee pulls him in for another hug.

Lee looks the same as he did when they were 23 - Jon Bon Jovi hair curling around his ears, smile too easy, ease in every line of his body.

“The hell are you doin’ here?”

“What am I doing here?” Lee laughs, gestures around them proudly. “I own this joint, man! What are you doing in here?”

Dean lowers his voice, “Working a case.”

Lee’s grin slips a little. “Still hunting, huh?”

He sounds disappointed, looks at Dean like he’s got weeks to live. Which is fair, he supposes, because it might be true and it always kinda is with hunting.

“Well yeah!” Dean answers anyway, because what the hell else would he be doing?

They used to kill time on long hunts talking shit about what they’d do when they got out of the shadow of their families' revenge; own a bar, or a roadhouse, a motel or a diner, a friggin shooting range or some crap, anywhere hunters could gather and swap info, or just take a day between hunts.

It was always just make believe though, or it was for Dean, who’d had his chance to get out and hadn’t taken it.

Looks like Lee was a whole lot more committed to the idea.

“Dean Winchester, unbelievable. Hey, Lorna,” Lee calls the waitress over, the pretty dark haired one from before. “Lorna! Hey, can we get a couple a beers for me and my boy here.”

Lee grins at him again, big and genuine and cheeky. The kind of grin that used to mean they were gonna get into some trouble.

“You got time right?” he asks.

“For you?” Dean says. “Always.”

//

“So you own the place? That’s awesome, man!”

“It is, isn’t it?” Lee says. “I can’t complain, that’s for damn sure!”

“Ha! Bet that doesn’t stop you.”

“You bet your fuckin’ ass it doesn’t,” Lee chuckles. They settle in at the bar. “How ‘bout you, Deano. You’re not still running solo?”

“Nah, man, you know me.” And he does, is the thing. At one time he knew Dean better than anybody else on the planet. They ran hunts together a few times after Sam left for Stanford and Lee always got the brunt of Dean’s abandonment issues back then, he knows damn well that Dean doesn't handle being alone. “Sammy got dragged back in.”

“Shit. He here too?”

“Sorry, man, he’s entertaining a lady friend back in Kansas, if you catch my drift,” Dean wiggles his eyebrows for good measure. Lee rolls his eyes but he’s laughing all the same. “I figure he didn’t need me cramping his style, y’know.”

Lorna comes by with a couple beers, Lee grins at her and says loudly, “Yeah, Deano, you always were awkward around pretty girls.”

Dean raises his eyebrows, because Lee knows damn well girls were never the problem.

Lorna laughs at them, then leans over the bar and says, “We’ll see about that later, handsome,” and winks at him.

“Damn,” Dean says, watches her walk away and is almost tempted. But only almost.

“So, tell me,” Lee says. “How’s the old man?”

And doesn’t that just put a dent in Dean’s good mood before it’s even left the showroom. It hadn’t occurred to him that Lee wouldn’t know, somewhere down the line everyone in the life just seemed to have heard.

“He died,” Dean says.

Lee’s face falls. “Shit.”

“Yeah, 13 years ago.” It’s been so long, and most of Dean’s friends never met John. He’s not used to people asking, not sure what he’s expected to say. “But, hey. He was doing what he loved the most; kicking ass and taking names.”

“Yeah,” Lee says. He seems genuinely gutted, takes a long time to grit out, “I’m so sorry, man.”

He has that look that again, soft and disappointed, that rubs Dean the wrong way. Like Dean should still be reeling from his daddy’s death over a decade later, like talking about it is gonna break him. The look reminds Dean of Sam’s careful sympathy back at the bunker and Dean does not care for it in the least.

Sure, Dean was John’s obedient little soldier back in the day, and nobody knows that better than Lee, but he’s had enough time to come to terms with his daddy issues.

Mostly.

He’s certainly not desperately trying to earn his dad’s approval any more, anyway. He’s grown above his dads expectations in the last 10 years, he knows he has because it’s been an agonising, slow, stumbling progress.

Dean learned a long time ago that his dad usually meant well, usually did what he thought would protect them. But now he also knows that John wasn’t the paragon of insight Dean used to think he was, knows that he was wrong about a lot of things.

And maybe accidentally summoning your dad from the past is the unbelievable secret shortcut to closure therapists don’t want you to know about but, still. Dean’s kind of offended that Lee thinks he’d still be trailing after his dad at 40 years old.

For a lack of anything else to say, he falls on platitudes. “I appreciate it.”

“I always liked that crusty son of a bitch,” Lee laughs, and Dean knows that’s not true, but people get weirdly polite when death is involved. Hell, Sam did the same thing.

Dean forces a smile, takes a swig of his beer.

“Remember that time he caught us wasted on a hunt? He was so mad I thought he was gonna have an aneurysm!”

Dean does remember, because they were so high they’d lost track of time and if John had barged in 15 minutes sooner, he’d have caught Dean on his knees with a mouthful of cock and that would have been much, much worse.

He doesn’t say that, because there are people sat at either side of them and Lorna is smirking at them across the bar again, and Dean has no idea if Lee is open about that shit or not here. It’s always risky in these Texas backwoods.

“Oh, man, yeah,” Dean says instead. “I tell you what, he always liked you.”

Lee shakes his head, takes a drink.

“He always liked you,” Dean insists. John ran jobs with the Webb’s more than once or twice, which was a rare thing. “In fact, he said he’d never seen anybody better in a fight and that is high praise coming from my old man.”

He frequently told Dean he wasn’t as good as Lee at hand to hand. Had told him he could learn a thing or two. Dean had learned an awful lot from Lee in their time together, but not exactly the things his dad had in mind.

Lee toasts, “To John Winchester.”

“Thank you,” Dean clinks their bottles, and that’s enough of that. “Man, so. I don’t think I’ve seen you since Sammy was in college.”

Lee nods, “Right.”

“I mean, hell, I thought you were--”

“Dead?”

“Well, I mean- that’s usually how this ends isn’t it?”

Lee sighs, “Yeah.”

There’s a moment where they just look at each other, and Dean knows they’re both thinking of the conversations they used to have when they were drunk, or stoned, or in the hazy afterglow of frantic, risky sex.

Or all three.

When they whispered about getting away from the weight of their respective families' revenge quests, away from hunting altogether, escaping the inevitable bloody end they watched hunter after hunter, friend after friend fall into.

That hasn’t changed. Dean has watched more friends die than he’s had haircuts, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. Lee might have managed to get out, to leave every aspect of the life behind, but Dean can’t. He’s been pulled along by these puppet strings for so long he wouldn’t know how to do anything else.

He also can’t have this conversation in a bar full of civvies, so he shakes his head at Lee’s meaningful look and drains his beer.

Lee catches his drift, nods and drops his gaze to where he’s picking at the label on his own bottle. Then;

“You remember that cult thing we did in Arizona?”

“Oh yeah, I remember that.”

It had been real nasty, and Dean's never seen that kind of monster since. Human-passing cannibals, posing as preachers. Predators luring in desperate kids under the banner of faith, and taking everything from the poor bastards before finally putting them out of their misery.

“Well,” Lee goes on. “I did one more case after that, right around here. And I decided that wasn’t the life for me anymore. I scrounged up what I could and I bought this joint. Living the dream!”

He raises his hands, takes the whole place in. And it’s awesome, it really is, but something of shine is missing for Dean after Michael. He couldn’t stay here and trust it, isn’t sure he could stay anywhere reasonably safe and trust it anymore.

“Let me ask you something?” he has to ask, because he can’t imagine leaving the life behind and not drowning in guilt. That sharp stab under his ribs. It didn’t fade in his year at Lisa’s, he knows himself well enough to know it wouldn’t fade hiding in the ass-end of Texas for 15 years. “You ever regret it? Walking away?”

“Not once,” Lee says, firm and sure.

//

Happy hour hits, and they relocate to a table when the bar gets too busy to talk without hollering at each other. Lorna joins them for her break, brings them shot glasses and a whole bottle of tequila.

“So, how long you worked for this hard-ass?” Dean asks her.

“Be thirteen years in May,” she toasts, they all slam one back.

“Lucky number 13, huh,” Dean smirks.

Lee ain’t the blushing type, but Dean expecting him to get at least a little flustered or annoyed or roll his eyes or _something_. Possibly he’s just been stuck in close-quarters with Sam for too long, but Lee blindsides him.

“Don’t you fuckin’ know it,” he winks, leans over to audibly whisper to Lorna, “Lucky 13 was out go-to hook up room in the motels of our troubled youth.”

Dean damn near chokes on his own spit. Obviously Lee is more out here than he thought. Lorna pours him another shot, smiles like she’s gonna eat him alive, and Lee did always know how to pick a good woman.

“Hey, remember those sisters in Wichita Falls?” Lee laughs, wicked glint in his eyes. “Gorgeous brunettes, and Deano here fell flat on his ass right in front of ‘em! Real pick up artist this guy--”

“-Okay, one, three bottles of jaeger is nobodies friend,” Dean says, knocks back another shot. “And b, they were twins.”

“Oh whoa whoa, no. No,” Lee insists, and Dean remembers just before he says, “They were triplets! And we split ‘em up fair and square.”

“That’s right,” Dean agrees. The two girls and a guy, and boy were they up for anything. That was an awesome night, Christ. Dean misses the days where he could think about an orgy with triplets without also thinking about Crowley. _Ugh_.

They all drain their shots, and Lorna gives him one more obvious look over and then heads back to bail out the couple of bar staff struggling to keep up with the rush.

A guy in a cowboy hat wanders past, pats Lee on the cheek as he passes.

It’s not the first time, and Dean’s not jealous, he’s not. Or he is, but not because the guy is touching Lee. They used to sleep together, sure, but they weren’t exactly exclusive, it’s not like they were _dating_. Sometimes they’d go years between joint hunts, months without seeing each other, and they had sex with other people as often as with each other when they did get together.

But… Lee has a place here, a home. He’s like a pig in shit, in his element; smiling and winking at the band, the patrons, the staff. Every single person who walks past him waves at him, says hi.

These people know him and accept him, and yeah, Dean can admit he’s envious of that. He has two people in the whole world he can relax with, and one of them isn’t talking to him.

“You okay, brother?” Lee asks, pouring them both another shot.

“Yeah,” Dean says automatically. Then, “No, not really. But, man, I can’t even begin to explain.”

Lee nods, like he has any idea, but before Dean can be annoyed by more overbearing sympathy, Lee goes on.

“Sure, okay. Detraction it is!” He takes his shot. “Remember that cursed fridge magnet we picked up in Ohio?”

“We? I wasn’t the one tap dancing around that old ladies apartment!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lee chuckles. “Your old man saved my ass. Anyway, you know all my hunting stories, dude, and they ain’t all misery. Pony up - what’s the funniest shit you’ve seen?”

“Oh man, that is a question,” Dean laughs. “We have seen some messed up shit. Hey, you know there’s an alternate universe where me and Sam are just actors?”

“Really?” Lee skips right over the Alternate Universe part and goes right to, “You? Acting?”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I have the perfect face for TV, I’ll have you know, even your Sheriff thinks so, ha!” And that reminds him, “Oh, and the time an angel pretending to be a trickster zapped us into TV land too. Gave Sammy herpes and then turned him into my car.”

“Baby?”

“Yeah, poor Baby!”

“Bet Sam wasn’t so happy about it either,” Lee says. “Bet that boy got you back, too.”

“Hell yeah, he did. Little jerk likes to remind me of the pussy I was when I had ghost sickness-”

“--Ghost sickness?”

“Ghost Sickness,” Dean confirms. “Man, it was no fun. Everything was scary! This cat jumped out at me and I shit myself dude!”

Lee laughs, shakes his head like he’s not sure if Dean is pulling his leg.

“I’m not joking,” Dean insists. “It was awful, man.”

They take another drink, Lee still looking sceptical. Then he changes tack altogether.

“You haven’t even told me what case you’re working on, man.”

“Oh! Right.” Dean grabs the newspaper cutting from his pocket. “So, girl went missing. Of course, Sheriff things it’s nothing right?”

That’s how it always goes. Lee snorts.

“Yeah well, Sheriff in this town couldn’t find his own ass with his flashlight and a map.”

Dean slides the article photo across the table. “You recognise her?”

“Uhhh,” Lee says, slowly. “No.”

“That’s Angela, Lee,” Lorna says over his shoulder. “She’s in here all the time.”

“Wait?” Lee takes another look. “Is this the girl that doesn’t drink that much, but her friend--”

“Like a fish--”

“--is like a fish. Mhmm.” Lee nods, shoves the paper back. Then, “What you doing man?”

“What?”

“Chasing missing persons?” Lee scoffs. “I thought you’d be on to bigger things by now. Like the, uh, Lock Ness Monster? Bigfoot?”

“Trust me,” Dean says. “Bigger doesn’t always equal better. Beside who’s gonna look out for the little guy? God certainly isn’t.”

“Damn, brother. That’s _dark_.”

And, yeah, he supposes it is. Dean doesn’t really want to get into all that comic shit tonight, wanted just a few hours off.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it’s been a rough uh-- been a rough decade, Lee.”

Lee nods, “Yeah,” and doesn’t push so Dean takes his chance to deflect.

“That’s a conversation for another time because this, this right here? This is alright!”

“Well, I’m glad you approve,” Lee clinks their glasses, looks Dean right in the eyes. “There is nothing you can’t have man.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, _sure_. “C’mon, who’s gonna kill the bad guys?”

“Somebody else,” Lee answers, and he’s dead fuckin’ serious. “Dean. How many lives you think you’ve saved? Hundreds? Thousands? You deserve a break, bro. Hell, you might even deserve two!”

He pours dean another shot, and they just sit for a long maudlin minute.

“Hey,” Lee says, suddenly. “Remember that old song your dad used to play us before we’d go out on a hunt?”

“Yeah, yeah. He’d pop it in the tape deck and say _listen up boys this is real music_.”

Lee smirks, “He wasn’t wrong.”

Oh, no. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lee smirks, then, “GOB boys,” he says to the band and they pick it up without pause. Lee’s up on stage like a duck to water.

Dean stays where he is, rolls his eyes at Lorna flittering by with an armful of empties, but Lee doesn’t let him of easy.

“C’mon boy!” he jeers, points right at Dean, the bastard. “You can’t just sit around lipsyncing eye o’ the tiger when nobodies watching!”

Lee always did know how to strong-arm him into a good time. And Dean almost always enjoyed the ride. He knocks his drink back and makes his way up to the stage, heart pounding like crazy.

Singing is one of those things he used to do with his mom when he was very small. He remembers singing to her round belly when she could barely walk anymore, and then to baby Sammy when he as born. After she died, Dean sang to Sam in the awful, scratchy motel cribs to get him to sleep, but never when dad could hear him.

Lee always loved karaoke, though, and they’d spent many a night getting smashed and singing along to any vaguely rocky tune on the rosters of so many backroad bars. It was part of their ritual, after the hunt and before they stumbled back to lucky room 13 and fell into each other.

After Stanford, Dean singing out of tune was one of the quickest ways to annoy Sam out of a bad mood, and he’s just sort of fallen into the habit since. He’s pretty sure bad karaoke is still the most evil thing he did with black eyes, but he’s not gonna tell Lee that.

He sucks it up and sings.

It takes a sec to remember how to stay in tune, not over-exaggerate the highs and lows of his voice, but it’s fun once he lets himself get into it.

Lee slaps his ass right up there in front of all these people, and Dean’s real glad the lights are so hot because his face burns red.

“Well,” he says, “Never got a standing ovation before.”

“Yeah! Feels pretty good don’t it?”

Lee looks at him like he used to, hungry, _filthy_ , and Dean feels a rush that has nothing to do with he crowd. He’s pulled into another hug, and Lee steers him off the platform with the arm still around his shoulder.

“You could always stay,” he breathes into Dean’s ear. “Forget the case for tonight. Me and Lorna’d be happy to take your mind off it, Deano. Like old times?”

Dean wishes he was more tempted, but he can’t. He just-- _Can’t._

He’s saved from having to answer that by some douche harassing a girl, and then it really is like the old days and they get to kick the shit of the d-bag together.

//

The girl turns out to be Sally Anderson.

Dean asks her to hang around til closing, and Lee lets them stay in the roadhouse while he patches up the damaged window. Lorna takes a break from washing glasses and taking stock behind the bar to bring them coffee, because she’s a goddess.

“Tell me about Angela,” Dean prompts once Sally’s got some caffeine in her.

“She was a good girl, y’know,” she sounds upset, and Dean sympathises. Having a best friend vanish on you sucks ass. “She loved Jesus and--”

“--and America too?” Lee butts in. Dean shoots him a look.

He’s snappy in a way that doesn’t suit him, and Dean can’t decide if it’s because he’s tired or because Dean’s never turned him down before. Kinda blowing his own trumpet, but he knows he’s a good lay. Either way, Lee waves him off, goes back to the window.

“Sally,” Dean assures. “Just tell me what happened.”

“We left B’s around closing. I was pretty hammered but-- Angela, she was helping me to her car when I, ha,” she looks down, embarrassed, “ I needed-- y’know I got sick. And when I was done, she was gone. Angela was raptured and I was left behind.”

Dean tries to smile reassuringly, but this next part is the stickler. “And the car went missing too right?”

“Yeah,” Sally sighs. “It got raptured too, I guess.”

“You can’t--” Lee interrupts again. “You cant rapture a car.”

“It was a good car,” Sally says, then vents her frustration by pouring a liberal amount of Irish into her coffee.

“Dean,” Lee says, barely keeping his laughter under control. “Can I talk to you for a second, man?”

Dean doesn’t know what Lee’s fucking problem is, as hunters they take all kinds of crazy shit seriously. He goes anyway.

“Man, come on,” Lee says, clearly exasperated. “Her story, dude, I mean--”

“I know, I know. Look, she’s not the most reliable witness but. Best friends don’t just up and leave without saying goodbye.”

He manages not to sound too bitter, even, but then Lee goes and says, “Unless they deserve it.”

It’s not like Lee even knows Cas exists, but it stings all the same.

“Yeah, just,” Dean breathes, focuses on the case and not his personal pile of issues. “Something seems off here.”

Lee sighs, steels himself.

“I'll tell you what I’ll do,” he says, and the frustration seems to bleed out of him. “I’ll lock the joint up and you and I can work the case, just like old times.”

“Great! Well, first things first, where’d’you dump a car around here?”

“Uhhh,” Lee says, thinks. “The lake? Maybe?”

“Or the wrecking yard?” Lorna suggests from where she’s cleaning tables, remarkably calm. “Look, I don’t wanna know. I’m just saying, if I had to get rid of something, Merle’s is where I’d do it.”

Oh this girl is so his type. He wishes he didn’t feel like everything he does these days is Chuck’s personal peepshow.

“I mean, I think the lake--” Lee insists, but, hey, if there’s two of them;

“Look, I’ll take the scrapyard,” Dean decides. “You take the lake.”

//

It’s fully light by the time he hits the yard, but still early enough that nobody is around.

Row after row of stacked vehicles surround him, and the rusty smell and creaky ambience are familiar in a way that makes him ache for Singer Salvage. Him and Sam still technically own that land, courtesy of Sheriff Mills, but they haven’t been back in years.

Dean spots the student parking sticker in the windscreen of the car from the photo, and, yep, there’s Angela in the trunk.

Dammit.

He’s just thinking the poor girl deserved better when he hears the click of a gun, and Lee cold-cocks him.

When he wakes, he’s tied up.

It wouldn’t be the first time with Lee, and if he didn’t remember leaving the bar this morning, he might think it was par for the course.

As it is, he’s got a throbbing lump on the back of his head and there’s a suspiciously cage like door rattling in front of him. Dean can hear footsteps above him.

“Lee?”

“You awake, buddy?” Lee calls back, comes casually down the stairs.

“The hell you doing man?”

“You had to hit the junk yard didn’t ya,” Lee sighs, like this is all Dean’s fault.

“Look,” Dean says, powers through the fuzziness in his head. “I don’t know what’s going on okay, but this is not you!”

“Well,” Lee shrugs. “Not the old me anyway.”

He crouches down right between Dean’s knees, reminiscent of so many times before, but so, so wrong.

“I wasn’t kidding about Arizona.”

Lee pats his thigh, looks up at Dean through his eyelashes like he used to. Dean swallows bile, stares at the grate welded to the door because he can’t look at Lee anymore.

“What that thing did to that family, to those kids,” Lee sighs, stands up again. “It stuck in my head. If evil like that exists in this world then guys like you and me- we ain’t ever gonna win! Best we can do is have a little fun. That last hunt I did, the one right around here. I found something.”

Lee knocks on the cage door, and something jumps up, ugly and scaly and spiky and nothing Dean has seen before.

“It’s called a marid. ‘s a freaky looking little thing isn’t it!” He laughs, looks at Dean like he should be in on the joke. Dean feels sick.

“As long as you feed it,” Lee explains, and the pieces click into place, the line in his arm taped to the bars. It needs blood. “It gives you money, gives you health. Anything you dream of.”

“And, so what, it just costs innocent lives?”

“Dean,” he says, that same disappointed tone as last night in the bar. “You and I both know, no one is innocent. After everything we’ve done, aren’t we owed a little happiness? Don’t we deserve that much?”

And granted, Dean hasn’t had much happiness in his life, but he knows it’s not something you’re owed, something you earn. He learned that lesson when Amara brought mom back.

Happiness is something you work at, something you build with the people you want in your life.

Dean’s been pretty fucking shitty at it lately, but he knows _happy_ ain't just gonna fall into his lap one day.

“Listen to yourself, ‘we’re owed’? ‘We deserve’? C’mon man, you’re not God. Hell, God’s not even God!”

Lee isn’t impressed.

“Good,” he says, slowly. “Or bad. The world doesn’t care. No one cares, Dean.”

“Well I do.”

They might all be fucked when Chuck plays his hand, but damn it all if Dean isn’t gonna save as many people as he can on the way out. He's done sitting on his ass.

“Yeah,” Lee says, soft and patronising. “That’s what got you here.”

He opens the line.

“Now. Takes a while to drain a man. But, listen to me,” he pats Dean’s neck, rests his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Don’t worry bout it alright-- don’t- don’t worry because once you lose a couple pints you just fall asleep and then it’ll be over.”

“Lee,” Dean has to try. Lee only sighs again, resigned.

“This is not how I wanted this to go Dean,” he squeezes Dean’s shoulder, thumb pressed almost tenderly to his neck. “When that blond girl walked in here last night I shoulda known, y’know. Dean Winchester, the righter of wrongs. I knew you were gonna figure me out.”

Lee leans close, chest pressed right against Dean’s shoulders, lips almost touching his ear, and whispers, “If it’s gonna be you or me, well. I gotta pick me, sweetheart.”

He stokes his hand up Dean neck on last time, kisses his cheek softly, and leaves.

“Lee,” Dean shouts, “Lee!”

But the blood has reached the end of the tube, is dripping down into the cage and the marid or whatever rears it’s head, sniffing at the blood then lapping it up and Dean knows he’s got to get out before the blood-loss kicks in.

There are tools all lined neatly on the wall, so his tips his chair that way and hopes its a cheap as it feels. He lands awkwardly on his bad shoulder, but it doesn’t dislocate and it’s enough to smash the chair and loosen the restraints around his feet.

Marion gets agitated, starts banging against the door and it really isn’t sturdy enough. Dean has the sickening realisation that Lee must’ve been feeding this thing extremely regularly if that flimsy door has lasted this long, and then the hinges snap off.

Dean gets the ropes off his left arm, lunges up and grabs a saw just as the thing launches itself at him. It knocks the wind out of him, but he catches it in the chest and scoots to the side while it’s still recovering. Dean is up and ready when it comes at him again, knocks it to the ground with his good shoulder and then decapitates it with a couple hacks of the blunt saw.

It stays down.

Dean smashes the other chair arm, still tied to his wrist, rolls his shoulders. Then takes the head and climbs the stairs slowly. He really doesn’t want to do this.

He cracks the door just enough to throw the head through, gives Lee a minute to process and then kicks it the rest of the way open.

“Sorry about you friend.”

Lee hesitates only a second, then opens fire.

One two three bottles smash as Dean ducks behind the bar and, god bless Texas, there’s a shotgun stashed by the pickles. He returns fire, but he’s only got two shells and an empty box, and they don’t do much. Lee got off a few more shots, and Dean only heard two but Lee did always have a habit of grouping in threes so Dean takes a gamble.

“I’m out,” he shouts. “And by my count, so are you.”

There’s no more shots, so he takes it for confirmation. Stands up.

Lee empties his cases, drops the gun on a table. Then he smiles.

“You’re hardcore, brother.”

“No,” Dean says. Just _no_. “No, you don’t get to pretend like we’re still friends. I don’t know you.”

“You don’t, Dean?” Lee laughs. “I am you! I’m just you who woke up and saw that the world was broken.”

“Then you fix it! You don’t walk away, you fight for it!”

“Right,” Lee says flatly, hands on his hips. “What do you say we act like this never happened huh? You just walk out that door?”

“I cant do that,” Dean tells him.

He’s let actual monsters go on good faith before, but any faith he had in Lee is still tied up in the basement.

“You really want to do this?”

“No, I don’t.”

Lee nods, smiles like he’s won. Like a few drunken rolls in the hay two decades ago wipe the slate clean for years of unchecked human sacrifice.

“But I kill monsters,” Dean says.

Lee nods. Crosses his arms, defensive. “You want a shot at the title?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Dean moves first, gets a few good licks in before Lee shoves him into the table. He grabs Lee round the shoulders and throws him across the room, goes down after him for the pin. He doesn’t think about how close the straddle is to anything else they’ve done before and punching him in the face is a good distraction.

Lee wrestles him off, but he’s out of practice, stumbling up and away while Dean rolls and grabs a chair, brings it down on his back. Lee gets up, though, grabs an abandoned bottle and smashes it over Dean’s sore shoulder. Dean flinches back, arms up to protect his face from the glass, and Lee grabs the pool cue from the rack and whacks it at Dean’s still raised arms.

It snaps, and that doesn’t stop Lee from thrusting forward with it, but it’s so familiar to Dean after years of fighting off angel blades that he dodges to the side almost without thinking, the cue slides across his belly safely and the momentum carries them into the wall.

Dean snatches the cue from him, turns the move back on Lee and then it’s over, _shit_ it’s _over_ and--

“Oh,” Lee breathes. “I'll be damned.”

He takes a few more ragged breaths, Dean can feel his chest heave, he’s stood so close. Dean stays statue still, hands still clutching the cue and pressed against the warmth of Lee’s stomach. He can’t look down.

“Why do you care so much Dean?”

That’s easy, that he can answer. “Because someone has to.”

“Well then. I’m glad it was you. Wait, wait…”

He rests his forehead against Dean’s, sucks in those rattling breaths. His hands are pressed on Dean’s chest, and if he closed his eyes it could be desperately intimate.

Lee steels himself. Nods. “Okay, okay.”

And Dean steps back all at once, the cue comes out with an awful wet noise and Lee drops. Dean throws the cue down too, then sags onto the pool table and just--- shakes a little.

Fuck.

Dean drags himself across the wreckage, grabs a bottle of whatever’s still intact and slumps to the floor.

That’s when he spots the basket of phones tucked neatly under the bar, still a few left in it. He fishes his own out numbly, and that’s when he day goes from worse to _fuck you personally_.

12 missed calls from Cas, 7 voicemails.

_I need you to call me back, it’s Sam_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can find me on [Tumblr](http://disniq.tumblr.com)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who finsihed their degree?! So hoping to make updates weekly, barring any other world crises ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Dean makes it home in record time.

He’s so keyed up he doesn’t even put Baby in the garage, just parks her on the roadside and makes a beeline for the front door.

“Hey,” he shouts blindly, halfway down the stairs, not really knowing what he’s gonna find at the bottom--

And Cas is right there.

“Dean,” he says, faintly.

“I got your message,” Dean says. “Sam, is he--”

“He’s fine,” Cas says, and Dean can finally breath out for the first time in hours.

He drops his bag and his churning anxiety on the floor, just takes a second to get his bearings because _Sammy’s fine, he’s not dead or dying or--_ and then it crashes into him all at once that he’s looking at Castiel for the first time in weeks and all the pretty words he thought he might say have gone.

So have the angry words, the snippy ones, the downright pathetic ones.

He’s at a loss.

Cas doesn’t say anything either, they both just look at each other for a long moment, a map of the world between them and it might as well be the real thing for how distant they feel.

“Good,” Dean manages. “That’s good.”

Cas nods stiffly and heads back towards the infirmary and what can Dean do besides follow him. He needs to check on Sam at any rate.

Sam is sat up, which is good, but he’s raving nonsense at a very concerned looking Eileen.

“--Amara was there, and- and Becky, I think, and-- Chuck-- He’s- he’s-- Dean!”

“Heya Sammy,” Dean says. “You, uh. You feeling okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam insists. Eileen kinda shakes her head. “I feel like, uh-- I feel like I was in his head.”

“You were in Chucks head?”

“I think so. I think I saw his- his memories? He’s weak, Dean. I think we can beat him.”

And that sounds good, sign Dean up, but;

“How?”

“I, uh--” Sam starts, but Eileen insists, “We can worry about that later.”

As much as Dean wants to dive right in to kicking Chuck’s pasty ass, she’s right. It’s been a really shitty few days, a little unconsciousness might be nice. As a treat.

“Yeah, I guess,” Dean agrees, reluctantly. “I’m beat. See you guys bright and early for the pre-game.”

When Dean turns to leave Eileen tenderly mopping Sam’s Neanderthal brow, Cas is already gone.

//

Dean doesn’t sleep.

He tries, but he can’t switch off. It’s not new; he’s been plagued with dreams of drowning since Michael, of seeing his hands, brutally efficient, through a haze of grey and not being able to stop; dreams of waking up in a box, in a grave, _his_ grave, underwater, underground, always, _always_ suffocating and dark and--

He gives up after a few hours.

A shower makes him look slightly less dead on his feet, and keeping busy was always the healthiest of his shitty coping mechanisms. He cleans the kitchen, starts the coffee maker, makes eggs and bacon for four.

When the others eventually join him, beckoned by the smell of food, they don’t look well rested either. Eileen drowns herself in caffeine, Sam eats real pig without complaint.

Cas sits there like a marble friggin statue, hands folded placidly in his lap and not making eye contact. It’s like the old days, when he buzzed with otherworldly energy and wouldn’t understand a social norm if it slapped him on the ass. Only now he’s just being an ignorant dick on purpose, avoiding meeting Dean’s eye deliberately.

It’s infuriating, and on top of everything else Dean is itching to jump in, do _something_ , but of course it doesn’t work like that when you’re trying to overthrow God. There is no easy fix, no matter how much awkward brainstorming they do.

Sam has a vague idea that Chuck might be off his game, but they don’t exactly have a play-by-play. They still don’t have a plan, they lost the only weapon they’ve ever known could hurt God, and even if they pull a perfect road-map and a new cosmic-grade weapon outta their collective asses they still don’t know where Chuck is holed up.

So they camp out in the library and it’s Research Mode; Activate!

They divvy up anything remotely useful into manageable stacks. Dean takes the comfy armchair in the nook near the telescope, settles in with his pile of ancient theology and gets to work.

Cas sits at the map table, literally so far away from Dean that he’s not even technically in the library anymore, and flicks through a couple of Enochian scrolls in silence. Sam and Eileen settle at the wide study tables like normal people and don’t comment on the obvious, bleeding tension.

No progress is made in the first 36 hours, and Dean goes to not-sleep in his room for a change, before the 70 year old armchairs eat his spine and give him a permanent hunchback.

When he comes back baring fresh coffee, Sam and Eileen have also taken a break. Which, good for them. Hopefully they’re making out in a closet somewhere instead of whisper-giggling over lore in middle of the library.

But it does mean Dean’s gonna have to pretend to be a functioning adult.

Dean sighs through his nose, steels himself.

He sets the spare mug he brought in front of Cas, careful to avoid the delicate ancient texts sprawled out, and then drops very deliberately into the seat on Cas’ right.

“Mornin’,” he says, takes a sip of his scalding bean juice because he really doesn’t know what to follow up with.

“It’s 7.38pm,” Cas replies without looking up.

“Whatever,” Dean grunts, rolls his eyes before he catches himself. He’s supposed to be making nice. “Hey, c’mon, man. You been staring at these chicken scratches for days. Would it kill you to take a break.”

He’s being facetious, it’s not a real question. Cas knows it’s not a real question.

“If we don’t find a way to stop Chuck,” he says anyway, tone perfectly measured. “Then; yes, we’ll all be killed.”

“Come on, Cas--”

“Dean.”

His voice is steel, and Cas looks him in the face for the first time since he walked out and it’s like a punch to the solar plexus because that night he’d looked tired and sad and resigned and _human_ but now his eyes almost glow with all that righteous determination and the old angelic pride that Dean never really learned how to navigate.

“Unless you made a breakthrough in your research,” Cas enunciates, calm and collected. “I don’t think we have anything to discuss.”

Okay. Silence it is.

Sam shows up a few hours later, freshly showered and apparently fresh-minded too.

“I was thinking we should check the archives,” he says, and he’s not even finished the thought before Cas says;

“I will.”

Dean tries not to take it personally. He hates the dank little archive rooms anyway, and if Cas wants to give him the silent treatment and avoid him like a petulant toddler, well.

Fine.

Whatever.

Back to work.

//

Dean hates it.

They can’t move forward without a lead, and they can’t find a lead without wading through every book they own. The dust and lack of sleep make Dean’s eyes itch, squinting at tiny print all day is giving his a throbbing migraine that brings memories of locked storerooms and flatcaps.

Because they don’t exactly know what they’re looking for it’s even more tedious than usual. Everything might be something, so they have to follow it up. The three of them trade off on referencing and cross-referencing and then it usually turns out to be a bust anyway.

And Dean wants to help, he does. He knows he hasn’t been pulling his weight the last few weeks, and he wants to make up for that.

But a week into fruitless book trawling and he’s painfully aware that there’s a reason he’s not the go-to research guy on the team.

It’s just not his bag, okay. He doesn’t get that same thrill Sam does when an index card leads exactly where they need to go, or when the Men of Letters already translated that one super specific ancient skin scroll.

All the quiet focus leaves too much time to dwell on things he’d rather not think about.

Normally, he’d be happy to leave Sam and Eileen to their heaps of dusty, itchy old books and their fancy online translators, he’d find a milk run and disappear for a few hours.

But his last milk run was a complete shitshow, and it’s one of those things his mind keeps drifting towards.

He honestly hadn’t thought about Lee in years but now he can’t stop, and it’s all twisted together with exhaustion and tied in a neat little bow of all the other crap he’s actively not thinking about.

When Dean’s eyes drift closed he can almost hear Lee breathing in his ear, sweet nothings turned into wheezing last breaths; pressed together chest to chest in Lee’s bar, resigned and hurt; in motel beds, soft and tender; Cas pressing him into the wall of some stinking alley- an old warehouse- an empty restaurant- a mouldy crypt, furious and disappointed.

The breathless anticipation the first time Lee kissed him making all the tiny hairs on his necks stand to attention; the sick turn of his stomach when Lee’s fingers trailed up his jugular in that basement; Cas cupping his battered face in an oh so gentle apology; the phantom bruises left by his dad’s fingernails digging in to the soft skin under his jaw, the awful, shameful tears on his cheeks when John spat right in his face, “ _I didn’t raise no queer,_ ” because he had, he _had_ raised a queer, and for all that Dean had desperately pretended he wasn’t for a long time after.

But Lee knew, when he smiled through the weed haze and pulled Dean in by his belt loops, like Ketch knew in a quiet corner of a bunker crowded with strange people from a different Earth, like Crowley in seedy little bars across the country, and Benny between desaturated trees and--

Like _Cas_.

He’s been sure Cas has known for a while now, thought the long looks and lingering touches and the gentle simmer between them was clear, thought maybe they were both waiting for the right time except there is no right time for them.

But Cas left, walked out just when it looked like there might be time to finally sort through their issues. And he’s made it clear he’s only here now because it isn’t actually over yet.

Dean can’t bridge that gulf if it’s a temporary measure. He can’t risk it being worse the next time Cas walks away.

“Uh, Dean?” Sam saves him from his own thoughts, flicks him in the nose for good measure. “You awake?”

“Am now,” Dean grumbles, rubbing his eyes for show. Dozing off over research is better than drowning in your own depressive thoughts for who even knows how long. “Can I help you, Samantha?”

Sam huffs through his nose like he does when he knows Dean is bullshitting him. Perched on the arm of the other chair with his hands clasped in his lap and his lips pursed he looks like a friggin guidance counsellor.

“Gee, Coach, am I off the baseball team?”

“Nope,” Sam says, “I’m pulling you off the bench.”

“Uh huh,” Dean stands, stretches until his spine pops because he knows Sam hates it. “I’m listening.”

“So. Eileen went out this morning,” Sam starts. Dean has no idea what time it is right now. He nods. “She didn’t say where and she’s not answering her texts.”

“Aw,” Dean coos. “Worried about her?”

“No!” Sam insists. “I-- I’m just- I want to make sure she’s okay, that’s all.”

“You know she could probably kick your ass, right?”

“Dean. Everyone we know could probably kick our asses. Does it ever stop you from worrying about them?”

Fair. Point to Sammy.

They’ve wandered to the war room, the scrolls from days ago still littered everywhere. Some of it is Enochian, some Cuneiform, all gibberish to Dean.

Despite himself he asks, “Cas still hiding in the basement?”

“He’s sorting through the artifacts down there, yes.” Dean stares at a random symbol on a random page until it blurs and _feels_ Sam bitchface behind him. “You should talk to him.”

“Easy for you to say,” Dean mutters, fiddles with the dog-eared corner of a page. “He isn’t avoiding you like the fucking plague.”

“Look, man--”

“I know!” Dean snaps. He _knows_. “I know, okay, Sam. Just. Go do your stalking or whatever.”

“It’s not stalking,” Sam argues, but he starts up the stairs anyway. “It’s- it’s concern. She could’ve left a note, okay.”

//

Sam leaves him staring blindly at the pages of symbols across the map table, lines running into lines, a mass of unreadable nonsense--

He blinks them back into focus and a lightbulb goes off.

Only problem is this is a two-man job, and Dean first two options are preoccupied.

Great.

He puts on his big boy pants, and heads for the basement.

The first two archive rooms are Cas’ patented brand of organised chaos, piles of folders and curse boxes and books sorted by whatever system makes sense to Cas and Cas alone. To Dean it looks like a tornado hit, but he knows from experience if he asked for one specific file from the debris, Cas find it for him in seconds. Or, y'know. He would if he was actually talking to Dean.

Cas himself is sat on the floor in the middle of the third storage room, back ramrod straight, a giant bestiary propped open on his crossed legs. Dean carefully tiptoes through the piles of assorted crap, even manages not to knock anything over.

“Hey,” he says.

Cas murmurs a greeting without looking up. Dean breathes slowly through his nose, tries again.

“Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

“Need any help?”

“No.”

“Okay, great,” Dean wrestles his temper back, just barely. “Look, Cas, I could use your help with a lead.”

Cas still doesn’t look up, but his head tilts slightly so Dean knows he’s listening.

“I need you to go pick up Donatello.”

“The prophet,” Cas says into his book. “Why?”

“Just--” fucking _because_ , he wants to scream, _trust me_. But he also wants to do better, and there’s no reason not to take a minute to explain. “Just an idea. A long shot, but-- Okay, the Demon Tablet, right?”

Cas still stares at an entry on a weird horse-mermaid looking things, but his eyes stop following the words and Dean figures that’s as good as he’s gonna get.

“It’s instructions for how to look out for us soft, squishy humans if God isn’t there to watch our backs, yeah? So, what if it also has notes on how to get rid of him in the first place, huh?”

No answer, and Dean can feel himself getting defensive.

“I mean, Angel Tablet would’a been better, probably, but make do with what we got. It was dictated by the big guy himself, right? I figure it’s worth a look, at least.”

Cas finally looks up, meets Dean’s eyes over the heavy hardback.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” he agrees, then he stubbornly raises his book again.

And Dean is trying, dammit! He really is, but he ain’t exactly a saint and his patience is wearing thin and how the fuck is supposed to talk to Cas when Cas keeps putting literal barriers between them.

“Look,” he snaps, so much for keeping cool. “Be pissed at me all you want, pal, but this is important!”

“Well,” Cas snaps back, finally drops the book and stands to get in Dean's face. “If it’s so important, you do it. I wouldn’t want to screw it up.”

“You know what, I would,” Dean is shouting before he can stop himself. “But last time I left Sam on his own for 18 goddamn hours, you put him into a vision coma and almost got him killed!”

Dean braces for Cas to shout back, thinks this is it; they can vent all their frustrations and move on.

But Cas doesn’t shout, he sucks in a breath through his mouth and presses his lips together tight and they stand in deafening silence for a minute.

An eternity passes, and then Cas nods very slightly, swallows hard. Dean watches his throat bob and knows he fucked this up again. It’s not Cas’ fault Sam has that stupid bullet wound. It’s definitely not Cas’ fault Dean wasn’t here, wasn’t answering his stupid fucking phone.

“Cas,” he starts, and suddenly all those words are there, and there’s so much he needs to say it all gets tuck in his throat. “I--”

“I’ll go,” Cas says, and does.

//


	8. Chapter 8

Donatello is always fun to have around.

He’s the nicest guy without a soul they know and he’s always brings a scholarly sort of dignity to to their cosmic nonsense, which Dean finds refreshing after a lifetime of being the crazy drifter.

Donny also likes to hysterically remind them that their lives are absolutely batshit like he _hasn’t_ had his soul eaten, been kidnapped by Lucifer’s jilted ex-vessel or been driven crazy by a really old rock.

It’s that last one that has them all anxiously watching him work in the library, no risking leaving him isolated and unsupervised this time, and after a stressful few hours of helicopter parenting the conduit of the lord, the library reeks of cheap fried chicken and they hit-- well. Something.

The spell isn’t on the tablet, but the authors notes give them a jumping off point. If they can talk to Michael, he might know the binding spell they used on Amara.

Maybe.

It’s not much to go on, but at this point Dean will take anything to keep them from stewing in dust particles and frustration.

And then, just to make Donatello’s day, Chuck holy-hijacks his body to threaten everyone they know.

It’s a stark reminder that they’re up against _God_ , and that the bunker’s warding may be good, but it’s not that good. Chuck can get in here on a whim, by proxy or in person. It makes Dean feel those puppet strings tugging, tangling tighter around his neck.

Chuck’s still toying with them.

“So, do we drop it?” Cas asks, and _c’mon man_ , Donny is right there with the voice of god and, apparently, his extending ears!

Dean tells him he better leave and Don sprints up the stairs in record time, bucket of wings and all.

“Okay,” Dean says when he’s gone. “Like hell we’re dropping this.”

“But,” Cas argues, “Donna, Jody. They’re not safe.”

They haven’t been safe for a long time, nobody who gets close to them ever is. Hell, more than once, the people they met exactly once have come back to haunt them as a big ol’ target for the baddie of the week. Maybe Cas isn’t used to being on this side of that threat, Dean thinks viciously. Maybe if he stuck around more often he’d know how this works.

“They’ll never be safe,” Sam says, placatingly. “As long as Chuck is out there it’s only a matter of time--”

“-before he rounds ‘em up and offs ‘em!” Dean cuts in, angry, because this isn’t a conversation to have gently. “Just to watch us suffer!”

It’s what Chuck has done for years, slowly killing off their friends, their family, random fucking strangers in cheap parallels, all to keep his petty drama going and there’s only one way to make it stop.

“The only way to keep them safe,” Sam continues. “To keep _everyone_ safe, is to take Chuck down.”

“Which is exactly what we’re gonna do.”

“Are we seriously,” Cas says slowly, turns to face them both head on, the closest he’s been to looking Dean in the eye for days but still not quite right and it rubs Dean exactly the wrong way. “Talking about going to Hell to try to speak to Michael? _Michael,_ who is in the cage. And _insane_?”

“Yeah and who told us that?” Sam asks.

“Lucifer,” Dean snaps. “And Chuck. And I trust them about as far as I can throw them. But Cas, if you wanna stay here; why don’t you stay here.”

//

Sam corners him later, in the store room.

Dean has no idea what they actually need for the spell; Sam got the Hogwarts crash course from Rowena, not him. He takes a jar from between the familiar purple rockrose and the yellow acacia - some kind of dried red blossom he can’t remember the name of - sniffs it and puts it back while Sam stands in the doorway looking judgy.

He picks up another jar, something green and wet, turns it over in his hands and watches the air bubbles slowly glug upwards through the thick fluid. Gross.

“Dude,” Sam finally says.

He stomps over and snatches the jar. Shoves it back on the shelf hard enough the other glasses clink together.

“Dean. I am trying to let you deal with this whole- this _situation_ with Cas,” he flaps his arms vaguely around, gestures so broadly it could mean anything, _everything_. “But it’s getting ridiculous, even for you.”

“’Even for me’?” Dean scoffs. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re being an asshole, Dean!” Sam shouts.

He's got a high tolerance for Dean's particular brand of bullshit, but sounds like Sam's hit his limt. Dean's not interested in the impending intervention.

“Wow,” Dean says, nods, takes a step towards the door. “Thanks, Sam, for that rousing show of support, I’m gonna--”

“I’ve been _being_ supportive,” Sam says, exasperated, and grabs Dean’s shoulders before he can turn away. “I didn’t push when Cas left, when he was gone for weeks without answering his phone, even though he’s my friend too. I still don’t know what happened! Because neither of you jackasses will talk about it, you’d both rather _brood_ and _sulk_ and- and avoid each other and, y’know what, I could maybe deal with that shit again if you weren’t being so fucking bitchy about it--”

“ _Bitchy_?”

“Yes, bitchy!” Sam shakes him a little. “Look. I backed you up in there because I think you’re right, I think this is worth a shot--”

“Funny way of showing it,” Dean grumbles.

Sam shoves him, just enough that he stumbles before he catches his balance.

“Just shut up and listen,” Sam snaps, starts rummaging through the ingredients and handing them roughly to Dean one by one. “You don’t think-” Some moss. Some seeds. “-Maybe-” Lambs blood. “-just _maybe_ -” The red blossom, knew it! “-Cas has some issues with Chuck threatening people we care about? After what he did to Jack?”

He drops one last clear vial into Dean’s arms, like a witchy mic-drop, not that he needed to after that low fucking blow. Sam lets the heavy silence stew for a moment, then says;

“I really thought you were gonna do it, Dean.”

“I wasn’t,” Dean starts, but he was. Kill Jack before he could hurt anyone else and kill himself in the deal before he ever had to feel the guilt. He _was_ going to do it, right up until he couldn’t.

“Cas thought you were gonna do it, too,” Sam says, because Dean doesn’t feel bad enough about the whole thing already. “And then you _didn’t_ , and it was a miracle for all of 30 seconds before Chuck took him away from us anyway. And I haven’t been handling it all that well and you haven’t been handling it at all--”

“I- _what_ \--”

“But at least we’ve been not handling it together! Cas has been dealing on his own. And then he finally comes back here and you treat him like you’re trying to push him away! Again!”

“Okay,” Dean mumbles to the glass bottles cradled to his chest. Screw this. “You made your point, Sammy.”

“Not yet,” Sam says, keeps his eyes on Dean’s face until Dean’s stomach is in knots and he finally meets his dumb, earnest eyebrows. “My point is; Cas doesn’t deserve to be miserable forever. And neither do you.”

//

Dean takes his arm-pothecary to the kitchen, Sam collects Eileen and Cas. They all hang back while Sam gets his witch on, mixes the ingredients and fumbles through Rowena’s notes for the right incantation.

Dean’s head is a mess.

Well.

More of a mess than usual.

His nerves were already amped up before Sam reading him the riot act, what with Chuck turning Donny into a walking bluetooth receptor and the thought of facing Michael again.

And now they’re day-tripping to Hell.

Why the fuck not.

The spell needs blood of someone who’s already been to Hell, which excludes exactly nobody present, but Dean’s bled for less and a little pain should get his head back in the game.

The sharp sting of the blade does clear his head a little, but it doesn’t last long enough before Cas heals him. His hand hovers awkwardly, close enough to feel the warmth of his skin but not quite touching, and Dean turns away. He can’t deal with that on top of everything else right now, they need to focus.

The match drops, the magic flares, there’s a gust of wind and then the cold emptiness of Hell pushes all other thoughts aside.

Dean hasn’t been here since Billie and Crowley opened the side door to Limbo and the Cage. It hasn’t changed. Neither has the instinctual shiver down his spine, a putrid mixture of fear and exhilaration that never fails to turn his stomach. He shrugs it off, takes that grating first step and then it’s a little easier to keep moving.

Naturally, they don’t get more than 10 feet in before they’re ambushed by Charlie’s friggin Angels and Dean might like domineering women but he’s been thrown into enough stone walls for life, thanks. He catches sight of Cas being ragdolled over Farrah Fawcett’s shoulder and Sammy being thigh-choked out by Jaclyn Smith before She-hulked Kate Jackson stands on his neck, but then;

“STOP!”

He’d know that voice anywhere, Hell or Earth or otherwise, and the demons back off immediately while they scramble to their feet.

“Hello boys,” she says, and Dean’s never been happier to see Rowena McLeod in the flesh. “You did say you wanted to see the one in charge.”

She’s rocking a red jumpsuit and flaming fishtail hair, like Scottish Beyonce or something, and her minions lift her gracefully down the last few steps just to top it off. It’s weirdly awe-inspiring, and they all just stare at her for a second.

“Rowena. We thought you were dead.”

“Oh I am dear,” she says cheerfully. “Pretty much everyone here is. When I closed the fissure, it did cost me my life and my soul went to Hell. Big surprise.”

“And the demons just,” Cas says, slowly, “handed you the throne?”

“No one hands you anything darlin’,” she coos. “I took it.”

That doesn’t sound like the Hell Dean remembers, which took everything from you, then stitched your flesh back onto your bones and took everything all over again, but it’s been a hot minute. It does jive with Crowley’s business model. And, the way Sam tells it, there’s been a power vacuum at the head of Hell Incorporated for a few years now.

“So,” Rowena rolls her eyes, but it comes off more fond than anything else. “Why are you here?”

“Chuck,” Dean tells her. “He’s back, and he’s out of control. We need to rein him in.”

Rowena blinks at him. “You want to rein in _God_?”

And, well, it sure sounds crazy when you say it like that, but;

“Yeah,” Sam says, finally closing his slack-jaw and joining the conversation. “We think there’s a way. Listen, we just need to speak to Michael.”

“Michael, the out of his head Archangel?” Rowena giggles, high and girlish, and that is not a sound Dean ever thought he’d hear in Hell. “This just gets better.”

She looks between them slowly, like she hasn’t known them long enough to know this kind of absurd longshot is standard, then seems to realise they aren’t joking and her smirk falls into resigned acceptance.

“And anyway, it doesn’t matter!”

“What?”

“He won’t be _in_ the cage,” she says. “Every door here was flung wide when Chuck opened the fissure. Your archangel could be anywhere in hell. Or out of hell, for that matter.”

Fuck this, Dean has had enough.

“Rowena we’re running out of time, okay? We need Michael _yesterday_!”

For a beat, he wonders if he’s made a mistake, if this Rowena might not quite be their Rowena. Time is wonky in Hell, they don’t know how long she’s been stewing down here, how much she could have been corrupted before seizing power. Then she says;

“Did you not hear the man? Find him!”

And the demons scatter.

//

They’re lead down corridor after corridor that all look the same to Dean; scorched stone floors, sharp edged rooms that bleed endlessly together and all of them, every single one, is completely empty.

For a place supposedly hosting 3 billion souls, give or take, it sure is eerily quiet.

“Where are all the demons?” Cas finally asks, as they enter a smaller room lined with creepy-eyed little gargoyles.

“Otherwise occupied,” Rowena answers, cryptically, then conjures a bottle of scotch and a single tumbler out of absolutely nowhere.

She pours herself a drink, sets the bottle down on a nearby rock, then turns a corner and they’re suddenly in a large chamber straight out of Game of Thrones.

“There’s not all that many of them left, thanks in no small part to you gentlemen. Please, sit,” Rowena perches herself on the frankly terrifying snake throne, waves her hand and three vaguely seat-shaped rocks sprout from the ground. “Those pawns that remain have been left to their own devices since you boys took the big players off the board. We have a lot of reorganising to do, it’s a good thing I arrived when I did.”

She toasts them, takes a sip. Doesn’t offer them a drink which is rude, but Dean’s read enough middle-fantasy to know a political power move when he sees one. They’re here not as friends, but as subjects asking for the Queen’s favour.

Sam wipes his hands nervously on his knees, says, “Rowena, I--”

“Samuel, please,” she cuts him off immediately. “You killing me was one of the best things that ever happened.”

They don’t often hear that. 

“Yes,” she sighs, wistfully. “There are things I miss about being alive. Flesh on flesh sex. Amazon doesn’t deliver here, _yet_. But lads, I’m Queen!My subjects revere me- well. Fear me, which is better.”

She knocks back the rest of her drink in one.

“I should’ve died a long time ago. Samuel-” she raises her empty glass “-be a dear.”

“Uh,” Sam says, the stupidest _who, me?_ Look on his face. “Yeah, sure.”

He scrambles to his feet like it’s actually his job to wait on the queen of Hell and not just a show of subservience.

Wow, she's dead and he's still whipped.

Dean rolls his eyes, turns to smirk at Cas and remembers too late that he’s not on joking terms with Cas right now. Cas turns away from him in one smooth movement, fixes his gaze on the floor between his feet. Right.

Rowena leans forward in her kickass throne, looks thoughtfully at Cas, then Dean.

“What am I picking up between you two? A wee tiff?” She singsongs. “Tell your Auntie Rowena.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dean says at the same time Cas mumbles, “It’s fine.”

Still agree on that much, at least. Rowena isn’t having it though.

“Boys. Fix it!” she sighs again, long and loud. “I don’t have many regrets, but the few I do still haunt me. Making Napoleon so short was just _bitchy_. Telling Mick Jagger he had no future when I dumped him and, well. Everything with dear Fergus. Then one day you die, you go to Hell, they make you queen and… you can’t make it right.”

Those experiences are the furthest this from universal you can get, but whatever. Dean can't make anything right id Cas won't give him chance. He keeps his expression as flat as he can, can’t exactly tell the queen she’s full of shit when they’re waiting on a favour.

“So, fix it!” she insists again, and thankfully that’s when Sam stumbles back in with her scotch.

He’s followed by a quaking-in-his-meatsuit demon.

Michael is gone, nowhere in Hell.

Fantastic.

Time to bail on this impromptu therapy session and jump feet first into the next dead end.


	9. Chapter 9

Sulfur stink lingers like nothing else.

It clings to their clothes, their hair, their skin.

The kitchen reeks so strongly it’s making Dean dizzy, conjures the feeling of invisible fingers twisting his insides. He wants nothing more than to drown himself in the shower, but first they have a manhunt to organise.

“We should call as many hunters as we can,” Sam is saying. “Tell them to keep an eye out for anything angel-y. Eileen and I can--”

“Actually,” Eileen says, signs something Dean guesses might be _sorry_. “A friend called, asked for my help on a case.”

“Sure,” Sam is quick to reassure her. “Do you need any help with that?”

“I’m good, just waiting for Sue to call me in when she’s ready. I’m going to prep and maybe have a nap,” Eileen smiles apologetically. “If you’re sure you don’t need me?”

It cute, in an awkward kind of way.

“No problem, we’ll manage,” Sam says, smiles at her softly.

“Okay,” Eileen nods. “Let me know if you find anything.”

She heads off to her room. Sam watches her go, that sappy look still on his face, and Dean would tease him mercilessly if he wasn’t so keen to finish this conversation quickly.

“Well,” Dean says, too loudly, claps his hands together. Sam jumps, jerks round to glare at him but Dean can’t bring himself to be sorry, he needs to get somewhere quiet before he snaps. “Anyway. I'll call Donny.”

“Donatello?” Cas says. “Is that a good idea?”

“Probably not,” Dean concedes. “But he can spider-sense this shit, remember? If anyone is gonna know when Michael surfaces, it’s him.”

He found them halfway across the country when Jack was born, after all.

“Right,” Sam says, pulling out his phone. “I’ll give Stevie and Charlie the heads up.”

“I,” Cas hesitates, “I can call Jody. And Bobby.”

He sounds uncertain, like he’s not sure how that’s gonna help. Dean knows the feeling.

All they’ve got now is clutching desperately to straw after straw.

//

Dean goes straight to the shower room, scrubs himself raw with Sam’s expensive raspberry and vanilla bodywash, and still smells fire and brimstone.

His time with Alastair was a long time ago now, but it’s still on of the most defining periods of him life. He’s never forgotten that they can lose everything, can _give_ everything, for the right reasons or the wrong ones and you’ll only be saved if you’re still useful to someone, somewhere.

Knowing it was all part of Chuck’s fucked up narrative makes it worse, because his story was never going to end in Hell. Thirty years of non-stop torture and then ten years that were so much worse, and it was just a side-note in the apocalypse, a plot point in Chuck’s story.

Whatever entertainment he wanted to create, parallels or drama or whatever literary tropes Chuck was aiming for, the reality of it is Dean trembling in the shower spray over a decade later, muscles spasming to the memory of claws peeling the skin and sinew off of his back, his stomach, his thighs; the echo of Alastair whispering sweet nothings into his ear while he sliced at Dean’s flesh.

Knowing it’s not real hasn’t ever really helped with the tactile hallucinations, but real pain usually drowns out the remembered pain so he turns the heat up as high as he can stand, then a little bit more for good measure, and slowly breathes the steam in through his nose, out through his mouth.

When he can unclench his fists without his hands shaking, he pulls on fresh clothes. Leaves the tainted ones to stew in the laundry, he’ll deal with that later.

Right now he has shit to do, starting with a phone call.

Donny hasn’t sensed any shift in the force, or whatever, but Dean tells him to keep his ears open and that’s about all he can do from his room.

He finds Sam in the war room, typing away at his laptop.

“Well,” Dean sighs. “Donny’s got zip. How bout you?”

Sam shrugs with his entire body; arms, chest and everything.

“Nothing that screams archangel.”

“Yeah,” Dean slumps into a chair.

They’re stuck. Again. It feels like all they do right now is wait around for things to happen around them.

And speaking of waiting for things to happen;

“So, Eileen did good, right? Getting us back from Hell.”

Sure, they worked with her once or twice before. They knew she was a good hunter. But closing a case in a couple days isn’t the same as living this crap 24/7, and the average hunter life doesn’t really measure up to the Winchester standard of fucknuts crazy, not after years of steadily escalating threats.

But Eileen fits here, in the bunker, researching how to kill God and opening portals to Hell like those things are normal.

Eileen’s only been topside for a few months, it can’t have been easy for her. They all know that kind of trauma sticks.

“She doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam shrugs. “I guess.”

“You guess?” Dean isn’t even teasing, but Sam bristles, closes the laptop.

“Yeah. If, uh. If she needs something from me she’ll tell me,” he folds his hands together, prim and proper, what an old lady. “We have an agreement.”

“You have an agreement? That adorable,” Dean says, and he means it. And it occurs to him that he hasn’t told Sam that, with everything else going on. “Look, man. I didn’t want to say anything, okay, ‘cause I was. I was kinda in a bad place and I didn’t wanna jinx it or whatever. You know I tried the family thing, right-”

“Yeah me too,” Sam interrupts. “That’s not for us.”

“No, not really.”

They’re well past the picket fence at this point. But;

“Just saying, if it was to work. Eileen, y’know, she gets it. She gets us, she gets the life. She’s hot!” He twitches his eyebrows for good measure.

“Dean,” Sam rubs at his forehead, frustrated or embarrased or somewhere inbetween. “I--”

“All I’m saying-” Dean pre-empts, before Sam can derail him. Dean is well aware of the shitshow surrounding them, but Sammy has a chance at a little happiness in that and Dean is gonna make sure he doesn’t wave at it as it passes him by. “-is you-- you could do worse.”

Sam drops his hand to the table, looks at Dean like he’s being obtuse. Maybe he is, but being a hypocrite is part of Dean’s charm and he’s not gonna change that right now.

“And she could certainly do better,” he teases instead. “Like so much better!”

//

Donny calls back within the hour, and confirms Michael is on Earth.

The bad news is that he’s flittering about like a moth in a lamp store, and they have exactly zero chance of getting to him before he moves again.

The good news is that Cas has a plan.

They leave Eileen to her nap, and head out to set up while Cas lays the bait.

The old steelworks is a couple miles out of Lebanon proper, and it’s been abandoned for as long as they’ve lived here. Barda at the post office told him once that it’s haunted, which it definitely ain’t, but it does have an eerie feel to it that keeps the locals away. They’ve used it a few times for these high-risk conversations slash ambushes, and never seen so much as a homeless person or a group of drunk teenagers.

Makes it easy to set up their trap in a nice, secluded little overhang; not much space for Michael to avoid the holy oil, good hidey hole next door for him and Sam to wait for their cue.

Cas finally joins them, and they’re barely in position before Mike drops in. His face, Adam’s face, looks exactly the same, which shouldn’t be a surprise but it somehow hits more than anything else.

He’s more than happy to chat shit right up until Cas lights him up, then he turns stubbornly, sullenly silent while they cuff him and bundle him into the car.

Dean pulls Baby into the garage rather than struggle down the stairs with a prisoner. Cas hauls Michael out, starts heading towards the dungeon.

“Wait,” Sam says, scrambles out of the passenger side.

Cas squints at him and waits for an explanation, but Dean is impatient and snaps, “What, Sam?”

“I, uh,” he fumbles, then sets his resolve and straightens his spine. “I don’t think we should take him to the dungeon.”

“Sam,” Dean starts, because Sam has clearly lost his mind. This is _Michael_ , and it might not be the same one who took Dean’s meatsuit for a joyride but this one still signed the world off as collateral damage in his petty family squabble.

“I know, I know,” Sam says. “He’s dangerous, I know. But we want his help, Dean. I don’t think the best way to get it is by locking him up.”

“The cuffs are holding,” Cas points out, fucking traitor. “He’s neutralized.”

“Good,” Sam nods, Dean opinion clearly vetoed. “Lets take him to the research room.”

The research room is below the infirmary and is named, Sam informed him once, because the Letters used to conduct questionably-ethical experiments down here. They hardly ever use it for anything now, but some of the Apocalypse World hunters cleaned it up when they were here and Dean was-- well. Otherwise occupied.

Michael allows himself to be lead passively, but as soon as they close the door he starts pacing like a caged lion. Every muscle in Dean’s shoulders is bunched up tight.

“Even for you,” Michael hisses at them. “Especially for you, this is stupid.”

“Good to see you too, Mike,” Dean says, making himself step away from the door, from his escape.

Michael scowls at him, then decides to needle Sam instead and some small, traitorous part of him is relieved.

“Sam,” Michael says, and it could be casual if it wasn’t so bitingly cold. “You look well. Last time I saw you, in the Cage--”

“Yeah it doesn’t matter,” Sam cuts him off. “We need your help. God--”

“I’ve heard. Repeatedly.”

“Well then,” Cas tries. “You’re aware--”

“I’m not aware of anything!” Michael snaps, familiar cold fury, and Dean forces himself not to step back. “You’re asking me to trust you. You, who doomed me. You, who let Lucifer walk free while your own brother sat in Hell.”

That’s not fair, not really.

They met Adam exactly once, and they tried to talk him out of trusting Zachariah and when he went anyway, they went after him. It’s not like they haven’t thought about him since, they just didn’t think there was any way to get him back.

It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for Sam, and he’s the strongest man Dean knows. Adam was a civilian, a kid yanked from heaven who missed his mom. He wouldn't have survived.

Except that he did, apparently.

“Doing what we do,” Sam says, gently. “We’ve had to get used to losing people. Probably too used to it. With Adam, we said goodbye because we thought we had to. We were wrong.”

“Well don’t tell me,” Michael smirks, smug bastard. “Tell him.”

His eyes flash ethereal blue and then his whole body relaxes at once and-

“Hey Sam,” he says. “Dean.”

“Adam?”

The kid waves his hands spooky-like, mock growls like you might to toddler. Laughs like it’s the best joke in the world, and maybe it is when you’ve been trapped in Hell for a decade, but Dean’s brain is stuttering like a scratched record.

“Wait, wait,” he manages to croak out. “Michael lets you talk? He lets you _be_?”

“Well, yeah,” Adam shrugs, _no biggie_. “In the cage we came to an agreement. We only had each other.”

Dean takes a breath, packs away his own issues.

“Adam, look. I know we bailed on you, and there is nothing we can say to fix that--”

“Yeah?” Adam says, looks him right in the face. “How about ‘I’m sorry’?”

And Dean pulls up short, that’s not what he was expecting at all. Thankfully Mike takes the reins again while Dean flounders.

“Enough,” he snaps. “Why am I here?”

“Michael,” Cas says. “We needed to speak with you because God is back. You didn’t think the cage just opened on its own did you?”

“If my father is back,” Michael says, with all of that casual smugness. “He will usher in Paradise.”

“No he won’t,” Dean shouts, harsher than he meant to, but he has had enough of this emotional whiplash today and Mike needs to get with the fucking program. “Because _Paradise_ is boring and your dad is just looking to be entertained! Which means we’re his puppets. All of us. Especially you.”

The other Michael, _his_ michael, _ugh_ , started a whole ass war to get dear old dad’s attention. Dean willing to bet cosmic daddy issues are a universal trait.

He’s right on the money. Michael goes feral, kicks the chair aside and shoots up to get in Dean face and Dean resolutely does. Not. Flinch.

“You’re lying,” Michael spits. “I don’t know what your agenda is, but you’re _lying._ ”

He slumps backwards so suddenly Dean thinks he’s passed out, and gives them the goddamn silent treatment.

“He’s not listening,” Adam shrugs. “Give us a minute?”

So they leave him sat in a room talking to himself.

Great.

//

“What now?” someone asks, and someone else answers, “Let them stew for a while,” but Dean hears it like he’s in a tunnel, echoed and hollow, and he can’t tell who is who.

It doesn’t matter.

Dean leaves Sam and Cas conspiring in the hall, snatches a bottle of JD from the library stash and goes up to the gym.

It’s one of the only rooms in this place with natural light, opaque orange-coloured glass windows line the top of the walls giving the space a time-capsule feel; frozen in 1958.

More to the point, the ancient equipment still works, and Dean goes to town on the closest punching bag until the built up tension in his shoulders loosens, until the angry uncomfortable throb eases into a nice deliberate ache.

He punctuates hits with swigs of Jack, a comforting burn in his stomach to counterpoint the burn in his muscles.

Dean pummels the faded red bag until his knuckles split, and he can’t be bothered to wrap them, just keeps going. He can’t even imagine punching Michael’s stupid jaw, because it’s Adam’s stupid jaw too and the kid doesn’t deserve that just because he isn’t actually dead and/or out of his head crazy.

They’ve justified themselves for years by thinking he was gone. Burned out of his vessel by the almighty power of an Archangel, like they were promised would happen back in apocalypse take 1, or worse; trapped in his own head, drowning endlessly, unable to breathe but always just on the cusp of conciousness.

But that's just Dean issues surfacing again, when apparently Adam was just stuck in mandatory couples counselling. They should have been looking for him all along, and how are they even supposed to start apologising for that?

Saying the words is the easy part, _too_ easy. Dean learned young that people who make a show of saying they’re sorry usually have ulterior motives - simpering guidance councillors trying to make him talk, _sorry to hear about the fire_ ; pushy motel managers, happy to kick a couple of kids out on the street, _sorry, but rent was due yesterday_ ; his dad’s passive agressive bullshit, _I’m sorry I gave you an instruction you clearly couldn’t follow_ ; fucking Chuck, playing his games through mouthpiece after mouthpiece, _sorry, there’s no other way_.

‘Sorry’ is meaningless word, a cheap manipulation nine times out of ten.

Dean tries to apologise with actions where he can. Bring people things, take care of them, help them with things before they have to ask. Be there, even when you royally fucked up, even when you want the world to swallow you up, fucking _be there_ , so they can shout and punch and rage at you until they get it out of their system and forgive you.

But. 

Adam had a regular childhood, a normal mom. He probably doesn’t have the same hangups as Dean. The kid asked for an apology, maybe the least they can do is give him one even if it is too little too late.

Dean is scrubbing his split knuckles with the alcohol wipes they keep under the sink when Sam sticks his head round the door.

“Hey, Eileen’s got a bit of an SOS situation. You okay here while we check on her friend?”

“Sure,” Dean says. “We can handle Two-face, no problem.”

//

Naturally, ten minutes after Sam leaves there’s a resonating crash from the research room.

Dean arrives on scene just in time to see Cas firmly close the door on a raging Michael and the distinct sound of antique furniture being smashed.

“What happened?”

“Michael was not grasping the urgency of the situation,” Cas says calmly. “I shared my memories with him to hurry things along.”

“You mind-melded him?”

Michael shouts, long and loud and utterly unintelligible, then falls silent all at once.

“Yes,” Cas nods, walks down the hall.

Dean listens at the door for a minute, can hear breathing and nothing else.

Satisfied Mike is still in there, he follows Cas. Finds him sat at the kitchen table, hands clasped almost like in prayer. Who Cas would even pray _to_ at this point, Dean doesn’t know.

He does know he needs a beer.

“Maybe you went too far,” he suggests, tried real hard to keep the accusing note out of his voice.

“Maybe,” Cas agrees without looking up.

“I mean. He’s been in lockdown for quite a while y’know. Maybe you just, uh, went too fast.”

Cas doesn’t respond, keeps looking at his own fingers like they hold the secrets of the universe. Dean takes a sip of his El Sol.

“What’s he doing now?”

“No idea. He was,” Cas sighs, “Very distraught.”

Not much to go on.

“Yeah, but what exactly did he say?”

“’Leave’. ’Get out’. ‘I want you dead’.” Cas shakes his head, looks imploringly up at the ceiling. “We didn’t bond.”

He looks drained, now that Dean is looking, eyes dark and sunken. Looks old, tired. It makes Dean wonder how long he’s been missing those signs. He doesn’t know how to ask.

Cas is obviously done sharing, too. The awkwardness is stifling, and after a few beats of uncomfortable silence, Cas says, “Where’s Sam?”

“Eileen hit a snag with a case, so. He wont be gone long.”

And that’s it, stilted conversation topics exhausted.

Thankfully, they’re saved from themselves when the whole Bunker shakes like an earthquake, and it’s panic stations, go.

But the research room door is still neatly shut, and the walls are still intact, and Michael is just sat on the floor looking kinda pathetic.

“God lied to me,” he says, before they’re even through the doorway. “I gave everything for him, I loved him. Why? I’m not even the only Michael.”

Swap out that last word for ‘son’ and he could be describing Dean’s exact feelings when they found out about Adam. It might be funny if it wasn’t spiral after spiral in Chuck’s miserable story.

Mike stands, slowly, hands out in a peaceful gesture like his hands aren’t literal weapons of God.

“So, yes,” he says. “I will help you. What was done to the Darkness can be done to God, if he is as weak as you say. And I know how. That’s the spell.”

He slides a scrap of paper across the desk, torn from one of the books, looks like, and won’t Sammy be pleased.

Cas gives the spell a look over. “And the ingredients?”

“Myrrh,” Michael says, easily. He’s either great at bullshitting on the fly or he knows what he’s talking about. “Cassia, rockrose.”

“We’ve got that,” Dean says, knows they have them on regular order.

“And,” Michael adds. “To bind the spell together, the nectar from a leviathan blossom.”

“A leviathan blossom?” Dean has a sinking feeling. He knew it sounded too easy. “What’s that, like a flower?”

“A flower that only grows in one place,” Michael says, and Dean knows before he says, “Purgatory.”

With a snap of his fingers, Mike opens a portal as easy as anything, even with the enochian cuffs. He was right, they really should have pulled him outta the cage instead of Lucifer way back when. Would’ve saved them chasing the D-bag down over and over again for the last five years.

“There’s the door. It’ll remain open for 12 hours,” he watches Dean set his watch, then raises his hands. “Now, if you please.”

Dean supposes a deal is a deal. He unfastens the cuffs.

“You comin’ with us?” It’d be awful handy having a full power archangel on their side.

“No,” Michael says, simply, and turns to leave.

“Wait,” Dean’s mouth says before his brain can catch up. But he doesn’t think _his_ Michael would have helped anybody but himself under any circumstances, and he figures they owe Adam for this Michael seeing the light. “Before you go. Can I talk to him?”

Their eyes flash seamlessly and, “Yeah,” says Adam’s voice.

“Adam, I want you to know,” Dean says, swallows every instinct that tells him it’s pointless. “We are sorry. What happened to you…. You’re a good man, you didn’t deserve that.”

It’s as good as Dean can do with Adam and Michael both itching to jump ship, and it still doesn’t feel like enough.

Adam smiles anyway, nods like he knows but appreciates the effort anyway.

Then the fucker looks over Dean’s shoulder, directly at Cas, and says;

“Since when do we get what we deserve?”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! 
> 
> Finally, Purgatory 2.0! Thank you for being patient with me while I wrestled this chapter into submission. 
> 
> Also, I haven’t replied to any comments this week, 14 weeks isolation are kicking my ass and I haven’t had the spoons, but I really appreciate everyone who takes the time to comment - I reread them all the time, so thank you so much!!

Sam isn’t answering his fucking phone.

They’ve been sat on their asses for weeks twiddling their thumbs and now that they’ve finally caught a break, it’s a serious ticking clock and Sam isn’t answering his _fucking_ phone!

Dean tries again anyway, pacing up and down in tempo, _tick tick tick_ , a useless effort to keep from vibrating out of his own skin.

 _This is Sam leave a message_ , the voicemail tells him for the eighth time, and Dean can feel his pulse in his temples. Between that, his own irritable footsteps and the rhythmic clacking sound of Cas packing borax shells, it’s a cacophony of impotent frustration.

“Have you tried Eileen?”

“Yeah,” Dean isn’t actually an idiot, thanks. “Same thing, no answer.”

“Well,” Cas says, infuriatingly reasonable. “Maybe they just have their hands full with her case.”

“Yeah, or they’re in trouble!”

And there’s fuck all they can do about it from here, because Sam didn’t even give him a location. Eileen’s case could be anywhere within a two State radius.

Cas keeps hammering out bullets. Dean’s blood pressure ratchets up another notch, he takes another lap of the room just to keep moving. He’s half way round again when his phone buzzes in his hand and he almost fumbles it in his hurry to answer.

“Eileen where the hell are you?”

She doesn’t answer, of course she doesn’t; she’s deaf, but she doesn’t say anything either. Dean listens hard to the scratchy static of the phone dragging across fabric and he can just make out a distant voice saying, “--helpful Sam, now sit still-” and then a faint grunt.

“Eileen?” he tries again. Dean can hear Cas come to stand behind him, trying to listen in.

“--this might get messy--”

That’s Chuck, he can hear it louder now. What’s that bastard doing with Eileen? Where the fuck is Sam?

“Eileen?”

“Hi Dean,” Chuck answers, clear as a bell.

“Chuck, you dick--”

“Bye Dean,” Chuck says, then a soft whistling sound of air in the speaker before the call cuts off.

Dean wants to throw his own phone across the room just to hear the delicate parts smash apart, but he redirects the momentum into lunging towards the nearest laptop and pulls up the Find My Phone app.

“What did he say?” Cas asks, but Dean just shakes his head, types in Sam’s details. “What are you doing?”

“Tracking Sam’s phone,” he answers, fingers twitching anxiously over the keys.

Cas hovers silently by his shoulder. Dean can’t make himself look round to see whatever his face is doing.

The app gives a cheery ping, “Okay, here we go,” and zooms in on, “Milford, Nebraska. At a casino. What the hell is Chuck doin’ at a casino?”

He doesn’t want an answer, doesn’t give Cas chance either way, just pushes up and away from the table.

Chuck has Sam, they need to move. Now.

“Whatever, we need to go.”

“To Purgatory,” Cas says, with a look that somehow manages to be both imploring and unimpressed.

Cas can pull whatever faces he wants, Sam is still up to his neck in shit.

“Chuck has Sam,” it’s that simple. “I’m not leaving him!”

“Chuck’s not going to kill him,” Cas says, so sure. “That’s not the ending.”

No, it’s not.

But that doesn’t mean Sam is safe!

“Then he’ll torture him!” and that’s no better, dammit!

Dean steps around Cas, towards the stairs, and Cas sighs loudly.

“Dean will you stop,” he snaps. “Just stop being so stupid!”

“ _What_ -”

“If we attack Chuck now, we don’t have anything that can hurt him,” Cas says, calm and firm. “We get that leviathan blossom, complete Michael’s spell, build the cage - that’s our chance. That’s the way we’ll save Sam. And that’s the way we’ll save the world.”

And.

He has a point.

Sam is brave and strong and real friggin stubborn. He’ll hold out against whatever Chuck is doing until him and Cas can get this cage rigged up.

“Fine.”

“Fine?” Cas says, blinks at him for a second. He obviously expected Dean to put up more of a fight.

“Yeah, _fine,_ ” Dean says. Then again, “Fine. Let’s go.”

//

The bleak, grey landscape of Purgatory is familiar, even though Dean is fairly sure he’s never been in this particular spot before.

It’s still as washed out as it ever was, trees wider than Baby blocking all light from above. It should be claustrophobic, should trigger half the panic buttons Dean has, but one breath of the musty, stale air and his shoulders relax.

Nobody ever said Dean wasn’t fucked up.

His moment of weird nostalgia does remind him that he spent a year tearing through this sepia forest and never once saw any kind of flower, and Michael wasn’t exactly forthcoming with a description. Or a location.

“Well,” says Cas when Dean voices his concern. “If we see it we’ll know. It’s likely the only flower here.”

True. But they have to find it first.

“Alright. Maybe we’ll run into Benny. He’s probably king of this place by now.”

Dean checks his phone timer. They’ve wasted an hour already. They have 11 hours left to find something neither of them saw in a whole year, they need to pick up the pace.

“Okay,” he says, slides the phone back into his pocket. “Let’s split up.”

“What?”

“You go that way,” Dean points. “I’ll go this way. We’ll meet back at the rift, alright? We’ll cover more ground, we’ll better our odds.”

“Yeah. We’ll also improve our odds of getting lost,” Cas snaps. “Or killed. Come on.”

And he steps purposely off into the woods, so that’s that.

They walk aimlessly for about an hour in no particular direction, just hoping these flowers are gonna jump out at them.

They don’t.

More worrying, nothing else tries to ambush them either.

When they boned Dick Roman and got sucked into Purgatory last time, they were mobbed within seconds. Now, there’s nothing. Just the quiet crunch of grey-brown leaves under their cautious steps.

Where are all the monsters?

Presumably him and Cas, human and angel, are still the same beacons of energy they were back then. So unless every monster in monsterland just friggin disappeared, where the hell are they?

Dean’s just starting to think this is a goose chase when he catches footfalls behind him, slower and somehow still louder than theirs. He waits another few minutes to confirm he’s not just being twitchy and paranoid but, no; once he’s looking for it, he registers movement in his peripheral.

After the second time, he stops by a stump and sits down. Calls, “Hold up Cas, I got something stuck to my shoe.”

Him and Sammy went through as many of their patented Winchester SOS codes with Cas and Jack briefly in the manic period between escaping Apocalypse World and Lucifer crashing back into their reality but just to be sure Cas follows, Dean flicks his eyes to the brush where he last heard movement.

Cas squints at him, then the bush, dips his chin ever so slightly.

“We should deal with that. Quickly.”

“Yeah, done,” Dean says, brushes off his knees, tugs unnecessarily at his shoelaces, and starts forward again. “Follow my lead.”

Cas does, more's the shock. No eye-roll, no sigh. Just falls in behind Dean and goes along with it.

The last time they worked so smoothly together was probably the gorgon case nine months ago. It feels good to just _be_ , the two of them without any of their baggage, if only for a moment.

Purgatory always did burn right through Dean’s BS, stripped away the simmering anger in his gut and the constant doubt in his head.

Underneath all the crap, he’s missed Cas like a limb. Deam misses working with him, misses how he rambles when he finds an interesting bit of lore, his dry comments when he stumbles across a complete mistranslation of Enochian. Misses seeing him in the library at 4am when Dean's having a bad night, or catching Cas sneaking peanut butter in the kitchen even though he insists he doesn’t like the molecule taste.

Dean misses Cas desperately. All of him. And that purity of Purgatory whispers in his head that all he has to do it suck it up and apologise.

He did it for Adam, he could do it for Cas. Except he’s probably never going to see Adam again, and Cas is going to stick around at least some of the time. Hopefully.

The problem is; an apology without changing the behaviour is lip service. Dean’s pretty sure he saw that on Dr. Phil, but it rings true all the same. And he can’t change that behaviour because when the anger bubbles over like it has all the time lately, he can’t control it.

Here, in Purgatory, is the first time in months he hasn't felt that roiling, simmering tension in his stomach, his chest, his heart.

Without it Dean feels hollow.

They’re coming up to a corpse propped against a tree.

It’s rotted and toothy. Could have been a vamp, could’ve been a wolf, hard to tell. Whatever it _was_ , now it’s as good an excuse as any to slow down and ease their tail into making a move.

“I think we’re going in circles,” Dean says loudly. Pretends to case the nearest trees. “We’ve seen this corpse before.”

“No, Dean, my sense of direction is excellent,” Cas says, so deadpan that Dean is almost convinced he isn’t playing. “That’s a different corpse.”

Cas steps a little further away, stands with his back obviously open - good play, make the idiot following them think he has a clear shot - and Dean follows suit, leans in to look closer at the body. The thing is mummified, flesh dried out and blessedly little gross body smell.

The tail takes the bait. Too easy.

Crunches clumsily through the fallen leaves, way to close when he unhinges his jaw and lunges but Cas is firing all cylinders this time around and the leviathan isn’t prepared for a blast of grace.

“You’re right,” Dean jokes, buoyed by their success. “It is a different corpse.”

Leviathan dude grunts, rolls over looking offended. Good. Dean’s kinda offended he though he could take them out solo.

“We saw you following us,” Cas tells the guy. He has an awful scruffy goatee, like a Nickleback reject.

“Thought you’d never make your move.”

“What d’ya want,” Goatee spits.

“Well, it’s a little embarrassing saying it out loud, but we’re looking for a flower.”

“A flower?” he scoffs. “What do I look like, a florist?”

He looks like a low-rent Robert Downey Jr., and he starts to get up like they’re just gonna let him go.

Nah.

“Well, if you cant help us,” Dean shows off his shotgun, freshly loaded with Borax.

The guy suddenly becomes a whole lot more helpful. Amazing how many people do when you point the hollow end of a gun at ‘em.

The blossoms are husks, apparently. Grow in groups of ten wherever a leviathan decomposes. Honestly, Dean wasn’t sure these toothy fucks could die naturally.

Pihrahna-face ‘knows a place’, that’s ‘not far’, ain’t that convenient, but false lead or not it’s the only lead they got.

“Look at that,” Dean mocks. “Thought you weren’t a florist. Get up.”

Goatee scrambles up, rolls his eyes but goes to lead and goddamn, what Dean wouldn’t give to have any other guide in this place.

Which reminds him;

“Hey, you know a vamp around here named Benny? Burly guy, Cajun.”

“No. Heard of him though, everybody has. Guy who got out and then came back. Like an idiot.”

“Pretty much. Where is he?”

“Dead.”

Big-Mouth doesn’t even turn round, doesn’t look Dean in the face while he casually demolishes any hope Dean had that Benny might be thriving back down here.

“Long time ago. His own kind, they didn’t trust him and they,” he makes an awful tearing sound in his throat, “Ripped him apart.”

//

Goatee leads them to a river, and they walk down the bank in silence.

It’s grassy, or a dull parody of grassy anyway, dry dead weeds sprouted along the bank of the grey, muddy river. It’s not at all like the rocky stream Benny led Dean down last time, but the sound of the water is almost the same and _fuck_.

Dean should have come back for him.

Should have made more of an effort when he was topside, made Benny feel more welcome instead of abandoning him. Especially after what happened with Martin, and Dean just cut Benny off when he needed the most help.

Benny kept Dean half-sane that year he was here. He guided Dean out of monster heaven. More importantly, he saved both Cas and Sammy’s asses. On separate occasions.

And Dean repaid him by decapitating him and leaving him in purgatory with every vamp who saw him as a traitor. Including his own nest, his maker and the woman that they send back here together.

Dean never thought of that before. Just assumed Benny would be kickin’ ass and takin’ names like when they ran together. He hadn’t really thought about how teaming up with a human made Benny, what; a class traitor, persona non grata.

What’s worse, he never got to tell Benny how much it meant to him. Any of it.

Now he never can.

Dean has fallen a few paces behind, and Cas slows his steps to fall in next to him.

“I’m sorry about Benny,” he says.

“I owed him my life,” Dean says. Cas’ too. And Bobby’s soul, “And he sacrificed himself to get Sam outta this place.”

“This place will bring that out in you,” Cas says, sadly. “Guilt. It was my fault the leviathan got out. It was my fault we were here the first time.”

He pauses, and Dean thinks they’re probably both filling the silence with more fuck ups, list after list of mistakes they’ve both made.

Then Cas sighs, “I carry that guilt every day.”

And it doesn’t feel like they’re talking about Benny anymore.

“I know you’re sorry, Cas,” Dean says. “About Bel. About Mom.”

“I was talking about Jack,” Cas says, all friendliness stripped from his tone.

And Dean was getting to that.

He _was._ It’s a touchy subject.

Jack was on all of them. They all agreed on using Lily’s magic to bring him back. They all knew the costs. They were all worried. And not a single one of them wanted to act when they first suspected. And then it was too late, and Mom was dead and Dean, well.

He said some shit he didn’t really mean, heaped the blame at Cas’ feet because he didn’t want to take responsibility.

“I already apologised to you,” Cas continues. “You just refused to hear it.”

The conversation has veered wildly off track and this might be the closest thing they get to an actual talk, here in Purgatory where his defences are routinely dismantled, but Dean’s regretting going into it with a leviathan three feet ahead of them.

“Sorry I brought it up,” he says. And then, because Dean can feel the frustration of the last few awkward uncomfortable days rattling around in the hollow space of his insides, “Maybe if you didn’t just up and leave us.”

“You didn’t give me a choice,” Cas says. “You couldn’t forgive me, and you couldn’t move on. You were too angry. I left, but you didn’t stop me.”

And he widens his stride again and leaves Dean to wallow.

//

When they get where they’re going, it is horrifying.

A wide clearing covered in ashy half-rotted flesh and dust. Skulls that look like Jurassic Park props littered around and a few whole ribcages but no other discernible bones, which kinda makes sense for shapeshifting goo monsters but it’s hella unsettling.

The blossoms are gross little tentacles bundled in threes, some hellish mix between a heart and a hentai porno.

There’s four or five sprouting together in the middle, the biggest and most fleshy-coloured standing proudly in the middle.

Ew.

“Just like I promised,” the leviathan says, raises his arms like the greatest fucking showman and Dean wants to shoot him on principle.

“Grab one and lets get out of here,” Dean says, keeps his gun aimed at the douchebag just in case he tries anything again while Cas’ back is turned.

But when Cas steps forward he’s frozen in place, completely rooted to the spot. It’s a damn angel trap and Goatee smirks at them, the smug big-mouthed fuck.

“Mother’s got beef with you.”

 _Mother_?

“Eve?”

“Killing her alphas,” Goatee drawls, and yeah, sounds like Eve. “Swallowing her leviathan. Bringing you to her should earn us a nice reward.”

That’s a lot to unpack, but;

“ What d’you mean, _us_?”

Another body moves behind him, and Dean turns in time to blast it with the borax. It goes down, smoking from the chest, and Dean twists to check on Goatee but then pain explodes up his neck and jaw and the ground races up towards him and he’s out cold.

//

There’s grass on his cheek.

Conciousness comes slowly, but he’s aware that his face is pressed into the ground before he claws his way back to higher cognitive function.

Itchy grass and sticky dirt and, _fuck_ , a throbbing ache in his head and neck blossoming from his swollen jaw.

And then his brain kicks in and everything rushes back as quickly as it went out - Purgatory, leviathan, _Cas_.

Dean’s eyes snap open at once, and even the dim Purgatory atmosphere is too bright. He blinks his vision back into focus, wiggles his fingers and toes, arms and legs; nothing is broken. Except maybe his jaw, but it's not crippling, he can deal.

He pushed up onto his knees, wary, but the clearing is empty.

Cas is gone.

The blossoms have been destroyed, only smoking husks left behind.

Nothing left but the bones in the mist.

Fuck, _fuck_.

Dean checks his timer. 3 hours 8 minutes until the portal closes. It took them almost 3 hours to get here.

He does a quick check of the trees lining the clearing, calling for Cas the entire time. He finds nothing, and can’t justify waiting any longer.

He sets off back the way they came.

//

Dean stumbles cautiously back through the thickest part of the forest, listens hard for any movement but there is none.

The leaves rustle above and the roots beneath his feet creak and his own maddly fluttering heartbeat pounds in his ears.

If the leviathan took Cas to Eve, Dean doesn’t even know where to begin looking. Purgatory is vast, endless and mostly nondescript. There isn’t a single landmark Dean can think to look for that might be a basecamp or an outpost or anything.

There’s no sound, no clues, no trial he can follow.

//

When he hits the river, he picks up the pace.

Keeps one eye on the tree line for any moving shadows, but the bank itself is wide and open and he can see the path is clear a good two, three hundred yards ahead.

No sign of Cas anywhere.

The quiet babble of the river is still there, that echo of last time. And last time they were here, Cas stayed behind. Because he felt like he had to, because Dean had made him feel useless and incompetent, like a burden.

Dean thinks of that awful day after ghostpocalypse, of whiskey and regret in the library, of _something always goes wrong_ and _why does that something always seem to be you_.

He thinks of _I swear, if he did anything to her, you are dead to me._

They should have talked about it properly, should have powered through his inability to communicate, his anger at God and the world and everything, Cas’ rightful anger at him.

Dean thinks of Rowena and her list of regrets, thinks of Benny and Jack and Charlie and Mom and everybody he didn’t get to save, people he never got the chance to thank for everything they did for him, all the times he never got to say goodbye before they were gone.

 _One day you die, you go to Hell, and you can’t make it right_.

He doesn’t want Cas to become one of those people, a regret to carry with him for the rest of his miserable life.

Cas deserves better.

 _Since when do we get what we deserve?_ Adam had asked. And maybe he’s right, maybe he’s right, but Dean can not go back ten years and save Adam from the cage.

Maybe, just maybe, he _can_ make things right with Cas before the end.

He just needs to find him.

//

He reaches the tree near the mummy from earlier with less than an hour to go.

There’s still nothing, no signs of life anywhere, and he’d be more concerned about that if he wasn’t going out of his head.

He left Cas behind last time and it’s happening again, oh god, it’s happening all over again.

He’s panicking, breath coming in short gasps that don’t fill his lungs.

Dean needs to find Cas.

He _needs_ to.

He can’t go back without him, can’t lose him again.

Dean has 40 minutes left, he’s fucked.

No. No, no, no, he can’t lose everything here, not again.

He can feel his walls crumbling in the face of losing Cas here, again, and without even thinking he falls back on a habit he’s been avoiding for months, years.

Dean prays.

“Cas?” he whispers.

And just reaching out, quietly in this empty woodland, no guarantee that Cas can even hear him, shatters every bottled up emotion in his chest.

Dean grabs the nearest tree to keep himself upright.

“Cas, I hope you can hear me. That wherever you are it’s not too late.”

Cas doesn’t suddenly appear, of course he doesn’t, and the walls come crashing down completely.

“I should have stopped you. You’re my best friend but I just let you go. ‘Cause that was easier than admitting I was wrong.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He’s losing it, his can hear the shake in his voice. His eyes are burning and he can’t bring himself to care, there’s no one here but him and his long list of screw ups.

“I--I lo---” he can’t breathe, the words choking him, so many, and maybe that’s not the place to start.

 _Fuck_.

He can’t. Dean hasn’t cried since Mom, since after the funeral and everything came pouring out wet and real fucking ugly and it hadn’t helped at all.

This won’t help either, but all the things he’s pushed down are bubbling up and overflowing and the tears are coming before he can stop them and suddenly he can’t keep his legs under him, falls to his knees and only keeps from crumbling altogether by clinging desperately to the tree.

He sucks in air, throat raw, tries again.

“I don’t know why I get so angry. I just know-- know that it’s always been there and wh- when things go bad it, it just comes out and I can-- I can’t stop it. No matter how bad I want to I just cant stop it.”

Sometimes it feels like all his emotions link back to that anger at his core - when he’s worried, he gets angry, when he’s caught out he gets angry, when he’s grieving, he gets angry.

“And, and I-- I forgive you, _of course_ I forgive you-”

Dean swallows, licks the salt from his lips, sniffs.

“I’m sorry it took me so long--” his eyes are damp, nose streaming. His voice sounds nasally and wet. He’s a ridiculous fucking mess. And there’s so much more he wants to say, things he always imagined saying to Cas’ face one day when it’s all over and the world is safe and their family is alive and whole and--

Not the time. Not here, not now.

“I’m sorry it took me until now to say it,” Dean says to his knees instead. He should have apologised ages ago, except that he was scared it wouldn't be enough. “Cas, I’m so sorry.”

There is nothing but quiet stillness around him, and the ticking timebomb inching closer and closer.

Dean shakes himself, breathes deep through his nose. Wipes his eyes.

“Man,” he mutters, more to himself than to Cas, but- “I hope you can hear- I hope you can hear me.”

Then he packs the broken pieces of himself back in the box, and heads for the portal.

//

Dean lingers for as long as he can.

Finds the path directly back to the portal, and does a quick search of the smaller trails nearby, until the tick tick ticking in his head is deafening.

He’s down to five minutes-

Four-

Three.

He’s got to call it.

Dean’s got to go back, got to try to help Sam even if he is on his own, without a weapon, without backup, without Cas.

Shit.

Dean marches towards the portal, can see it, ribbon thin, a little ways down.

He can’t leave Sam to deal with Chuck alone, but maybe if they miraculously survive, they can come back for Cas after.

Heaven probably doesn’t have the man power for a purgatory rescue anymore, especially if Eve is running the joint again. Rowena might let them take the back door outta Hell, but she said herself that the hoardes of Hell were on the sparce side right now.

They don’t know any reaper coyotes since Ajay got stabbed through the heart, and Billie ain’t exactly in the habit of offering them favours for no reason but maybe she’ll take a trade, Dean’s life for Cas’, and, hell, maybe then Chuck would leave Sam and everyone else alone, if Dean was already off the board, if--

“Dean!”

And Dean’s got his shotgun up before he registers-

“Cas!”

He’s slumped behind a tree, hunkered down between the roots, panting and roughed up, but he’s whole and he’s _there_ and he staggers to his feet.

“You made it,” he manages, and his breathing really doesn’t sound good even for a being that doesn’t strictly need to breathe.

“ _I made it_?” Dean says, because he’s not the one who looks like he’s been through the meat grinder.

Dean can’t quite believe its real, has to pull Cas in close to make sure and screw that they’re not on hugging terms he needs to _know_. Cas all but falls into him, which they should probably worry about, but right now he’s warm and alive and everything else can wait.

“You okay?” Dean checks as he steps back, claps Cas on the shoulder one more time but he’ still solid, still _real_.

“I’m fine,” Cas croaks, not sounding fine at all.

“What happened?”

“They were after me, not you. I figured it’d be safest to give myself up.”

“They take you to Eve?”

“Yeah, we were on route. I waited until I saw this,” he says, reaches into his coat and pulls out a goddamn Leviathan blossom from his Mary Poppins pockets and that’s great, but Dean can’t pull his eyes away from Cas’s face, his real, whole, stupid, handsome face.

Cas laughs at himself, a harsh little sound, keeps his eyes lowered when he says, “It got a little smushed. Once I had the blossom I fought. Caught them off guard. They fought back.”

That much is obvious. More importantly, Cas pulled through while Dean was out of commission.

“You did it,” Dean says, “You did it, Cas.”

“Well, they’re still after me,” Cas says, shuffles a little uncomfortably. “We should hurry.”

But here, in Purgatory, words always came easier to Dean, and he has so much he needs to say and maybe it’s just because everything looked hopeless and bleak and in the space of 90 seconds it all got topsy turveyed and Dean’s head is still spinning, but he can’t leave without trying.

“Okay, Cas, I need to say something,” he starts.

But Cas cuts him off with a strangely reserved look on his face, almost apologetic.

“You don’t have to say it,” he says, not unkindly. “I heard your prayer.”

And.

Yeah.

Okay.

They have a time limit, an increasingly pressing time limit, and a job to do.

Cas smiles, gently, and it takes some of the sting away. It says that his apology was heard, and accepted.

It says that Dean is forgiven.

It maybe also says that now isn’t the time for the words Dean wants to say to Cas’ face.

So Dean swallows them down, and doesn’t know if he’ll ever screw up the courage to try them again.


	11. Chapter 11

They stumble back through the portal with seconds to spare, and if Dean pushes Cas through first this time, that’s nobody’s business but his.

Cas doesn’t comment, but his eyes are soft and understanding.

A little too understanding. And maybe it’s just because he’s still a little shaky and fragile, but Dean can’t handle another gentle rejection right now.

They have to throw this spell together and rescue Sam, and if Dean excels at anything it’s stowing his own crap to look after Sammy.

He just needs a minute alone. Just a few seconds to shake off the emotional overload of the last few hours, get his head back in the game.

“Okay,” he says, “I’ll grab those ingredients, you get set up in the library?”

Thankfully, Cas lets him have it. Just dips his chin and says, “Yes, of course.”

Dean heads to the storage room on autopilot. Tries to marshal his thoughts.

It’s almost jarring how obliging Cas is being after weeks of oppressive tension between them, and it makes Dean feel even worse. He should have apologised ages ago, should have fucking talked to Cas before the last possible second, shouldn’t have waited until the moment he thought he’d never see Cas again.

Chuck’s strings or not, Cas always stuck his lot in with humanity. Chuck’s strings or not, Dean should have asked Cas to stay.

But he couldn’t, so he didn’t.

He can’t change that now.

What he can do, he decides as he pulls the acacia from the ingredients shelf, is try to do better.

He can’t promise he won’t lose his shit again, he can’t promise he won’t lash out when that anger at the core of him inflates so much he can’t breathe. But he can try to direct it in the right place, at least.

Right now, that honour falls directly at Chuck’s almighty high-tops, and Dean can’t think of a better way to vent his frustration than locking the smarmy dickbag away in his own God-trap.

//

Cas has a table cleared when Dean makes it back to the library. The leviathan blossom is laid out next to the mortar and pestle and the nicer of their silver chalices is sat neatly in the centre. Cas is also holding a giant marble sphere that looks like it came straight outta middle-aged herbalist’s parlour.

“We gonna knock chuck out with that?” Dean jokes, dropping the rockrose and acacia on the table.

“Essentially, yes,” Cas says, mouth tilted upwards indulgently. “The marble acts as a conduit to the spell. We break it near him and the magic will activate the trap.”

Sounds simple. Probably won’t be.

Still, the mental image of snooker-balling God right in his squirrelly little face, of smacking that shiny rock into his holy teeth, is enough to make Dean grin.

He regrets it almost immediately, his swollen jaw still tender and stiff. He hasn’t looked in a mirror but he’d bet it’s a lovely vibrant shade of purple blooming up his neck, too.

“Let me,” Cas says, reaches across the table and Dean’s shoulders tense before he can commit to moving away or not.

Cas slows, telegraphs himself more obviously, but he doesn’t stop until his hand is hovering open-palmed by Dean’s cheek and Dean still doesn’t pull away. He looks Dean right in the eyes, wordlessly tilts his head in question and Dean’s throat is suddenly tight and dry.

He swallows. Nods.

Cas closes the gap. Moves his hand that last half-inch and gently cups Deans jaw, fingertips just grazing the bolt. It jolts with pain for an instant, then the hot-cold flash of grace and then just the soothing warmth of Cas’ massive hand on his face.

Dean’s eyes have slipped closed, he realises, and for a blessed few seconds before Cas drops his hand there is no Chuck, no end of the world, nothing but this, _them_ , together in the bunker like they haven’t been lately.

When he opens them, of course, reality comes crashing back in the apologetic angle of Cas’ frown.

“What is it?” Dean asks, as Cas starts lining up jars and checking labels.

“There’s something else,” he says into the bowl. “Another ingredient.”

Dean hasn’t actually read the recipe; it’s in Enochian and even if he felt like translating, the paper Michael gave them is still tucked away in Cas’ coat.

“Is it somethin’ we got?”

If they have to go on another magical quest, all of Dean’s new-found promises about keeping his temper better in check are gonna go right out the fucking window. But;

“Yes,” Cas says, at length. He fixes Dean with a firm look. “The blood of the person who will bear the seal.”

“Wait, what?” Dean says, but his mind is already racing ahead. This is the same spell Chuck used to seal Amara away for aeons, the spell that created the Mark of Cain, and Chuck himself said Dean’s soul was damaged goods, that he couldn’t take the mark a second time. Which means- “No! Cas, you can’t--”

“I can,” Cas insists. “We have limited options here, Dean.”

“Maybe,” Dean says, brain whirring through any other solution. “Maybe Chuck was lying, maybe I can take it the mark again and--”

“He wasn’t lying,” Cas says. Sighs. “My grace might be failing but I can still see your soul. The effects of the Mark are faded now, scarred over. But the damage is irreparable. I’m sorry, Dean, but I can do this.”

His tone brokers no argument. Sam was right, Cas is clearly taking Jack’s loss especially hard if he’s so ready to sacrifice himself to get back at God.

And they are on a schedule, and they don’t have any other options available. And maybe this can be a stop-gap measure; take Chuck off the board and then manage the mark. Lucifer passed it on, shared the burden, maybe they can work around it like that, maybe, maybe--

“Okay,” Dean says, and stashes all the maybes for later. He prods the vile, leathery leviathan blossom laid out in front of him. “What do I do with this thing?”

Cas gives him a small smile, thankful, maybe, that Dean is letting him have this without trampling all over their fresh, tentative peace. That alone makes Dean double down on his resolution to do better.

“The nectar is likely in the pods, I’d start there.”

Cas measures out the rockrose while Dean slices into the biggest fleshy tentacle. It’s tough, rubbery, and when it does finally give under the scalpel blade it smells of old blood and rotten meat. Inside is lined with small, black seeds.

“This thing smells like it’s gonna kill me,” Dean grumbles, tilts the severed tentacle towards Cas. “This what we need?”

“Yeah,” Cas nods. Checks the recipe, nudges the mortar to Dean’s side of the table. “Pulped.”

“Great.”

The smell is even more potent when he starts mashing the thing. The blossom releases a familiar black goo, mixing with the seeds and turning to paste. Ugh, gross. Cas gestures for Dean to add the nectar. Recites some Enochian, sprinkles the myrrh into the flowery mixture.

He goes for his angel blade, positions his hand over the chalice and, “Wait, wait, wait. Are you sure?”

Cas has given his life, his sanity, his home in Heaven, everything to save Sam before. And Dean has rarely ever thanked him for it. He’s a dick, it’s been established.

This, though… This is the kind of sacrifice Dean has made himself, when him and Sam were at their absolute worst together and Dean’s life was only good as collateral in a suicide play. Dean has enough regrets to fill the Bunker’s archives twice over, but the two years he spent bearing that mark are some of the biggest.

And he feel into that nightmare by jumping the gun, by not thinking things through, by not understanding the cost.

He can’t let Cas make the same mistakes as him, can’t let Cas take this on without being sure.

“Dean, you’ve already taken the Mark, you can’t take it again,” he says again. “I can. It’s the only way.”

And he slices into his palm, which pointedly ends the conversation.

Okay. They’ll deal with the rest after they rescue Sammy and Eileen.

Cas holds the marble sphere over the mixture and Dean tosses in the handful of acacia power into the bowl. Smoke erupts outwards then funnels up like a mini tornado, whistles as the spell is absorbed into the vessel in Cas’ hand.

“Because I’m taking the Mark,” Cas says when it’s done. “Someone else will have to destroy this. You or Sam.”

That’ll be the easy bit.

First, they have to get to Sam and hope he’s still in one piece.

//

It’s two and a half hours from Lebanon to Milford, Nebraska. Going flat out down the backroads, they make it in an agonising one forty five.

When they arrive, _finally_ , the Lucky Elephant Casino is deserted. The empty parking lot, unmanned foyer and abandoned drinks lined up across the bar remind Dean of the zombie flicks Jack loved, and they proceed with the same kind of suspicious caution.

Nothing jumps out at them from behind the bright flashing machines, though. No sign of Chuck or Lilith or anything else, just Sam tied to a chair in the middle of the high-end slots.

Dean goes straight for him, has his knife out and one zip-tie cut before Eileen comes out of friggin nowhere and clobbers him from behind. He rolls over and up with the momentum from the drop, but he loses his bowie along the way and Dean really doesn’t want to hurt Eileen when she’s clearly in distress; shaking her head and mouthing _sorry_ over and over while her limbs jerk around woodenly, a real puppet.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, hesitant, but Cas clearly has no problem tackling her to the ground before she can stab him.

Sam is struggling against the remaining zip-tie, twisting his arm frantically, but before Dean can help him Chuck appears right behind him.

“Hi, Dean,” he says, all casual like they’re buddies and not like he’s been secretly directing the horror show of their entire lives for shits and giggles, and that ugly, boiling emotional bubble bursts all at once and this time Dean know exactly where to aim it.

He twists and punches the dick right in his stupid fucking face.

It’s not as satisfying as throwing a billiard ball sized marble would have been but it’s still a solid, satisfying hit for all of four seconds before Chuck returns the favour, backhands him to the floor with whatever godly power he has left and it doesn’t vaporize him on the spot but it sure does bruise his freshly healed jaw.

“Sam!” Cas shouts, as Sam finally pulls free.

He rolls the marble sphere containing the spell across the floor to Sam’s feet, and Dean yells, “Smash it, now!”

But Sam hesitates, picks it up and looks at it and doesn’t move.

And Chuck, looking supremely unconcerned and maybe a little entertained, the fucker, says, “Well, Sam?”

Sam looks at them - Cas, keeping Eileen in a safety hold; Dean, on his knees pleading with every fibre of his being that Sam understands what this is; and Chuck, smiling benignly and just waiting.

After a moment that feels like an age, Sam falls to his knees. Lets the orb roll away and sags, battered and broken.

“I can’t,” he half-sobs. “I’m sorry. I-- I just- _can’t_.”

“What did you do to him?” Dean demands, jumping to his feet. He hasn’t seen Sammy this absolutely destroyed since he was ready to die to seal Hell in that abandoned church.

“Oh-ho yeah,” Chuck groans in lieu of an answer. He clutches his shoulder, the one with the gunshot, and Sam does the same a beat later. Both of their wounds glow bright like grace, and Chuck rolls his arm and his neck out. “Ooh, yeah, that’s the stuff.”

“What happened?” Cas asks, coming carefully closer.

Eileen seems to be in control of herself, for now. She sits on the gaudy casino carpet, staring at her own hands like they might be about to strangle her without her permission. Dean sympathises.

“Short version? Sammy lost hope and now I’m free,” Chuck smirks. “But hey, take it easy on the kid! Took a lot to beat it out of him.”

Nobody moves. Chuck looks at them, sighs in that patronising almost-paternal way that puts Dean’s teeth on edge.

Then he plucks the spell from where it rolled under a slot machine, holds it up in front of himself like he’s presenting Simba, squeezes the solid rock until it shatters, crumbles, evaporates uselessly into the air.

Chuck dusts of his hands, _no biggie._

And Dean has had enough.

His week has been hit after hit after hit and he is done.

If Chuck wants to kill them, he could just fucking kill them. But he hasn’t, because he’d rather play his stupid games.

Well, Dean ain’t playing anymore.

“Well what now,” Dean says, steels himself and steps forward. Takes the chance. “You’re not gonna dust us.”

“Oh, yeah?” Chuck says mildly. “Why not?”

“Because you’re holding out for your big finish,” Dean spits. “Yeah, we know about your galaxy brained idea, how you think this story is gonna go. Sam got a little look into your drafts folder.”

“Sam’s visions,” Chuck nods. “They weren’t drafts. They were memories. My memories. Other Sams, other Deans, in other worlds.”

Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. Maybe those visions were the future, maybe they’re the past. Either way, it’s the endgame Chuck wants. And they’re not gonna fucking give it to him.

“But guess what?” Chuck says, soft and mocking. “Just like you, they didn’t think they were gonna do it either. But they did. And you will too.”

“No,” Dean says. Steps forward, slowly, one foot at a time. Keeps his eyes on Chuck’s the whole time. “Not this Sam. And not this Dean. So you go back to Earth 2 and play with your other toys. Because we will never give you the ending that you want.”

Dean is right in front of Chuck now, doesn’t blink. Uses every inch of his height advantage to stare God himself down.

This is their lives, their choices, their friends and their losses. _Theirs_. Not Chuck’s. Dean is done being a puppet for this petty, bored, unimaginative little man.

“We’ll see,” Chuck says, eventually, that same vaguely entertained look in his eyes, and vanishes without even the snap flourish he’s fond of.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is spondered by my undending need for TFW to just fucking talk about some of their trauma occationally, and also I apologise in advance because this is the written equivalent of a long take in that there are no scene breaks, sorry!

If the frantic journey to Milford was bad, the slow solemn trip back is excruciating.

Sam, already a pale, dehydrated, bloody mess, goes damn near catatonic. It takes the combined efforts of both Dean and Cas to hoist him up from where he still kneels on the tacky carpet and guide him outside. Together, they bundle him into the back of the impala, where he slumps silently into the leather.

Eileen follows without a word. Joins Sam in the back, shakily signs _thank you_ then curls into herself and stares blankly out the window. Cas slides into the passenger seat, shoulders tight.

Dean, who is running purely on leftover adrenaline, knows they’re all too busy quietly falling apart for small talk, so he turns Sammy’s favourite Soft Rock station on low to gently break the oppressive silence.

Nobody complains.

Nobody speaks at all.

When they finally pull into the Bunker, Eileen jumps out of the car before it’s even in park and the slam of her door seems to spark something in Sam too, thank-- Well. Not _God_ , but someone.

At any rate, Sam moves of his own volition and follows her down the hallway. Dean’s not exactly clear on what happened at the casino, but he can connect the dots between Sam’s tattered, bloody shirt and Eileen’s stained red fingers and whatever the finished picture is, it sure ain’t good.

Dean cuts the engine, opens his door and swings his legs out but stays sat there for a minute, gives them space to find a quiet corner to hash it out. They’re both shaky and traumatised, the last thing they need is Dean listening to them air out their crap.

Cas also hesitates for a moment, then offers Dean a wan smile and heads into the bunker.

Dean lingers a little longer in the comfort of Baby’s walls, breathes in the smell of oil and metal. He’s bouncing somewhere between dispirited and elated. Sure, they technically failed today, their plan blew up in their faces and Chuck got away. But they got Sam and Eileen back safe and any day where Dean knows Sam is alive is always a good day.

And it feels good that they faced down God and won, however briefly. Chuck has been this huge, nebulous threat hanging over them for months, but they stood up to him today and lived. For whatever reason, Dean is buoyed by that.

They’ll have to deal with Chuck soon, have to work out a new plan of attack before he regroups and comes after them again. But they bought themselves some time.

Christ knows they could all use some rest before they dive face first back into research. Every single one of them is drained, exhausted. They need to keep from burning out altogether, Dean just isn’t sure how.

He’d settle for a few hours of sleep, for now, but of course he doesn’t get them.

He goes to lay in the dark of his bedroom. Stares blindly at the ceiling. Even manages to zone out listening to the hum of the showers running down the hall. But eventually the water cuts off, and without the white noise to quiet his thoughts there’s exactly zero chance Dean will actually drift off.

Time for some good old fashioned Hunter's Helper.

Voices echo from the war room as he nears, so Dean ducks onto the kitchen steps instead of going for the stash in the library. He only catches snippets - _I don’t know what’s real! -_ but what he does hear sounds painfully familiar.

Eileen knew in theory that they were being played by God. Now she has first-hand experience. That’s gonna take some adjustment, Dean knows, from hunting banshees and wraiths to gunning for the biblical Creator. He can’t imagine how Eileen is taking it, being dragged back to life just to be a pawn in Chuck’s life-size chess game. Dean met God in person over a decade ago, and still found himself all tangled up in his own strings for the last few months.

He’s starting to cut those ties, he thinks. But only tentatively. And with copious amounts of alcohol.

Speaking of which;

Dean turns into the kitchen proper and finds Cas sitting at the table, flicking though something on his phone.

“Hey,” Dean says, grabbing the whiskey and going for the glasses. “You want a drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” He sets the second one back on the shelf, pours himself a generous measure and takes it to the table. He prods the corner of Cas’ phone where it lays. “Anything interesting?”

Cas’ shoulders bunch up a little self-consciously, but he tilts the screen so Dean can see. He'd expected research, maybe case hunting, but no. It’s a photo of Jack, smiling lopsidedly with a spoon dangling from the corner of his mouth. Cas swipes to the next shot; similar but the spoon is missing and Jack’s eyebrows are furrowed, then a third; a full gummy grin, what looks like strawberry ice cream smeared across his cheek and nose.

Dean didn’t know Cas took so many photos, but they keep coming - Jack and Sam making smoothies in the kitchen, Jack zonked out over a huge, ancient book in the library, Dean’s own shoulders hunched over the foosball table while Sammy and Jack laugh into the camera.

“I remember that,” Dean chuckles. They tag-teamed him because _Jack doesn’t know the rules yet, Dean_ , and then the scheming bastards kicked his ass in three seconds flat. He got them back in round two, though, unfair advantage be damned.

Cas smiles sadly at the next picture - Jack slumped in one of the armchairs, intensely playing on his phone and looking every inch the normal teenager - and sighs.

And even though the answer is clear, or maybe _because_ the answer is clear, Dean has to ask, “How you doing, Cas?”

“Not great,” Cas says, simply. “That was our chance and we failed.”

“Yeah.”

There’s no sugar coating that. But, hey, making shit up as they go is kinda their thing. If they weren’t committed to giving destiny the middle finger before, they sure as shit are now.

“We’ll work something else out,” Dean placates. God, he sounds like Sam. But he means it. “We’ll get him.”

“But not today.”

“But not today,” Dean agrees. “Sorry, man. But we did get Sam and Eileen back, s’not all bad.”

Cas sighs again, and he really does look like the whole world is on his shoulders. He taps his phone, even though the screen has gone dark. Visibly considers his next words.

“I promised Kelly I’d look after Jack,” he says. Slides the phone off the table and slips it back into his coat. “Keep him safe. And instead I let him die. Twice.”

And he doesn’t outright say it, but they both know that’s not all on Chuck.

Dean held a fucking gun to the kid’s head, locked him in a magic box and was fully committed to tossing it in the ocean. Numb with grief or not, Dean made those calls. And he hasn’t exactly owned up to those choices since.

Now or never.

“Cas. Look, man. I’m sorry. For Jack, for-- for how I treated him. For- for what I did. He didn’t deserve that.”

“No he didn’t,” Cas agrees, and Dean knows he deserves it but it stings all the same. “He didn’t deserve to die, either. Chuck toyed with us all. And when you refused to play along, he. Took matters into his own hands.”

Cas pauses, twists his fingers together agitatedly. Dean has a sudden urge to reach across and hold them steady, curls his own fingers tightly around his tumbler instead. Cas’ mouth is turned down at the corners, his eyebrows pinched. Between that and the dark bags under his tired eyes, Cas looks drained. Diminished. _Human_.

“I came to accept my father was… _uninterested,_ at best. When the Angels fell, when they fought- killed each other, and he did nothing. I thought him wilfully ignorant when he hid from the Darkness. But I didn’t truly hate him until I watched, helpless, as he burned our son from his body.”

Dean doesn’t really know what to say that isn’t more worthless platitudes, more hollow apologies. Chuck is an asshole, _the_ asshole, and they’re gonna do whatever they can to make him pay. But right now Dean can’t offer a _how_ or a _when_ , so he keeps his mouth shut.

“I wanted to take the seal so I could be the one to bind him,” Cas confesses to his hands. “I wanted to make him suffer. _”_

“Then,” Dean says, carefully. “I’m glad it didn’t work.”

Cas looks up at him then, surprised. Tilts his head and squints at him in that way that used to make Dean think Cas was reading his soul, but Dean meets his eyes because it's absolutely true. The Mark was insidious enough without a personal grudge to amplify, and nobody knows that better than Dean.

Whatever Cas sees, he drops his gaze back to where his fingers are picking at the wood.

“Anyway.” Cas says, taking a fortifying breath and slipping back into something almost casual. “What about you, Dean? How are you feeling?”

“Well,” Dean replies, takes a sip of his drink, allows Cas his deflection. “I told God to suck my dick and didn’t get turned to salt, so. Could’a been worse.”

Cas huffs a laugh, only slightly forced, and they fall into silence again.

It’s not uncomfortable the way the last few weeks have been, but it feels heavy now. Sad.

Sam’s hesitant, plodding footsteps don’t ease the sombre atmosphere.

He shuffles into the doorway, hunched and pale and miserable, and Dean doesn’t really need to ask but he does anyway;

“Did she leave?”

“Yeah,” Sam croaks, then again clearer, “Yeah.”

“Sorry,” Dean says, and means it. Lord knows how fucking miserable he was when Cas walked away, but Sam hadn’t pushed then so Dean doesn’t push now. He takes a sip of his drink instead.

“That was our chance,” Sam says, clearly in the mood to torture himself from all angles. “To stop Chuck.”

He stumbles forward a few steps, still unsteady on his feet, but doesn’t sit down. Dean watches him, nods, and waits to see where Sam is going with this pity party.

Sam hesitates, though. Tucks his damp hair behind his ear, rubs a hand over his face in frustration and somewhere in the uncomfortable silence it occurs to Dean that Sam is waiting to be reamed. He’s _nervous_ , twitchy, and on top of being tortured and everything with Eileen, now he’s standing here waiting for Dean to lay into him.

Dean’s fucked up worse than he realised, if even Sam thinks he’s so volatile. He _really_ needs to work on that.

“But. What Chuck showed me- what would happen if we trapped him--” Sam stammers out eventually. “I believed him. I still do.”

And Sam has been wrong before. Really wrong. The most wrong it's possible to be. He’s been utterly convinced he was on a righteous path more than once only for reality to slap him in the balls. The road paved with good intentions and all that.

But all those other times - the demon blood, killing Lilith, taking on Lucifer, the Trials, opening the cage, working with the Brits. All of those things were Sam hellbent on doing _something_ , and this time he wants to _not_.

Maybe it’s the difference between Chuck’s plot direction and Sam’s own choices, or maybe it’s an arbitrary technicality that Dean is getting hung up on.

Either way, he trusts Sam.

“Well,” he says, pretends he doesn’t see Sam flinch in anticipation. “That’s good enough for me.”

Dean knocks back the last of his scotch while Sam takes in his words, processes them.

“Okay,” Sam says, tentatively. “Okay. So what now?”

“Well, Chuck’s gone,” Cas says. “But-”

“He’ll be back.” Dean doesn’t doubt that.

“So.” Sam says. “If we can’t kill him. Or trap him…?”

“Well, then we find another way.”

“What other way?” Sam laughs, verging on hysterical. “We don’t have any other ways!”

“We’ll find one,” Dean insists, the irony not lost on him that they had this very conversation in reverse not two weeks ago. “We’ll figure something out.”

“In fact,” Cas says, quietly, and it’s enough to stall the argument before it starts. “I’ll start now. You should both get some rest.”

He steps out of the kitchen looking just as exhausted as either of them, but Dean knows the stubborn bastard won’t admit he needs a nap too.

“He’s not wrong,” Dean says. Pats Sam’s shoulder and feels all the fight slump right out of him.

“I just,” Sam says, quietly. “I-- I’m so- _so_ sorry, Dean. I blew it--”

“You didn’t blow shit,” Dean snaps. It shuts Sam up, but he’s careful to keep his tone even when he goes on. “Look, man, I know you have your reasons, okay? I don’t know what Chuck did to you, but--”

Sam finally flops into a stool with a clatter so loud it cuts Dean off.

“He, uh. He gave me this stopwatch. Like- Like some _This is Your Life_ shit, but you were too blitzed to remember.”

“We can go over this later, Sammy, when you’ve had your beauty sleep, c’mon.”

“No, no. This is important, Dean. Just let me--”

“Yeah, okay. Go on then, Ralph.”

“It. It only jumped a few weeks the first time. We were researching in the library, you and me and Cas and Eileen. Like normal. Only not normal, because there were no cases, like _none_.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.”

“And then Jody called, and- and _Claire_ \--”

Sam explains the whole thing in stops and starts. The snippets, the flash-forwards, getting worse and worse. Claire and then Donna, and then Eileen. Cas, losing control of the Mark so much sooner than they’d hoped. Dean himself, making a new malak box and locking Cas in, turning hopeless in the process. And Sam, fixed solely on revenge like their Dad before them, and the both of them holed up like common fangers in a filthy apartment, waiting to die at the hands of their friends.

Sam is crying by the end, ugly crying. About the possible future Chuck showed him or the uncertain one they’re left with instead, Dean isn’t sure. He’s snotty and gross and gasping in breath between sobs and Dean doesn’t know how to even begin to calm him down.

He settles on, “Well, that’s not gonna happen now, right?”

Sam starts flapping his hands again, so Dean derails him by tossing his bandana at Sam’s damp face. He doesn’t use it, just twists it between his fingers anxiously.

“C’mon, have some dignity. Eileen just needs some space and she’ll be right back here kicking ass with us. And I am damn sure she wouldn’t let you mope around and drip bodily fluids on the kitchen table, dude.”

“Maybe, I dunno,” Sam shrugs, but he does wipe his chin and nose.

“He really got to you, huh?” Dean sighs. “Look, man. Chuck is still kicking. The balance of the universe is still balanced. Cas didn’t take the Mark. I’m not gonna go all Miss Havisham on your ass.”

That gets a startled, wet laugh out of Sam. He dabs his eyes with the rag at last.

“It sounds stupid when you say it like that, man, but it wasn’t. It felt so _real_. So fucking real. And it was just, you-- that _other_ you, or- or _future_ you looked and sounded and _felt_ just like you did when Jack was born and Cas-- Well. But it-- It’s ridiculous, anyway.”

“It’s not,” Dean says without meaning to, but it’s true.

Dean was a shadow of himself in those weeks where it looked like Cas was gone for good. He’d fucked up with Jack and pushed the kid on Sammy, and when the echoing abyss in his chest didn’t ebb, he’d killed himself in that filthy old asylum banking on the reapers not letting him leave again.

And after his horrendous, panic-stricken romp through Purgatory, after the renewed despair at even the thought of leaving Cas behind, he’s absolutely fucking sure he couldn’t handle that again.

Sam is looking at him, question in his eyebrows. And they’ve never exactly talked about it, not really, but it’s not like Sam never playfully ribbed Dean about Cas. Or Crowley. Or Aaron.

It's already been a weird day, might as well officially set the record straight. Or, well. Not.

“Maybe,” Dean says, cautiously. Swallows. “Maybe between Cas and Eileen, when this is all over we both got a shot at happiness, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sam gives him a watery smile. “Yeah, sounds great.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little late with this chapter, sorry! Life has been a little hectic, but once again thank you so much for all the comments :D
> 
> Also, there's been a lot of spectulation floating about on tumblr this weekend about the series finale etc., so I just wanted to note that this story is fully plotted and planned out to the end, and will not take into account any spoilers for anything after 15.13

By the time he gets Sam tucked up in bed, Dean is about ready to drop.

He leaves a glass of water and some Tylenol on Sammy’s bedside cabinet, and heads straight for his own memory foam.

He’s still buzzing, but for once in his life it’s the positive thoughts rattling around in his head not the negative. It’s a little adolescent, but it feels good to finally be transparently open with Sam instead of just flirting with guys when he’s drunk and then overthinking Sam’s reactions in the cold light of morning. 

Dean’s never going to be the guy waving a flag at a Pride parade, it’s just not his scene. Too many people, too many strangers. And even though he knows better now, the echo of his Dad in his head still makes it feel kinda like advertising a weakness.

 _This- this_ pervertion _ends now_ , John had spat, after he’d pulled the guy with the nose ring off of Dean and dragged his roofied ass out to the car, _No hunter worth his salt will want to work with a queer._ Dean had still been seeing stars and smelling fucking colours when they had that one-way conversation and John never brought it up again, but Dean never forgot. Couldn’t, when it haunted his every thought, coloured every social interaction for the ten years afterwards.

Then Dad died, and the world got infinitely bigger and more complicated. They’ve encountered creatures John never imagined were real, and they've worked with badass hunters and witches and angels in various shades of the rainbow over the years and Dean just sort of relaxed in teeny tiny increments, until it almost didn’t seem important anymore. What did it matter if his hook-ups were men or women or gender non grata when they were just a distraction for a few hours before they moved on to the next case, next town, next state?

But somewhere down the line, in between catastrophes and probably longer ago that he will admit, Dean fell ass over tea kettle in love with a male-shaped angel and suddenly it matters a whole lot. Their chances are admittedly still pretty dicey, but if they do actually live through this mess, if they get any kind of shot at a happy ending… Cas is it for him.

And there’s a big difference between Sam making jokes about him and Cas bickering like an old married couple and Sam actually knowing that that’s exactly what Dean wants. Now he does and even though Dean was almost sure before, Sam’s casual acceptance makes his heart swell.

His brother and his angel are alive, and safe, and home, for now, and it gives Dean hope that things might just work out okay for them in the end.

For the first time in a long time, he falls asleep with a smile on his face.

//

When he wakes up, groggy and disorientated, 14 hours later, the pleasant buzz still tingles vaguely under his skin. Like a weight he didn’t know he was still carrying has finally been lifted.

That’s probably why it takes him so long to notice something is off.

A quick shower tells him he’s out of shampoo, so he smells of Sam’s fruity concoction when he drags himself to the kitchen. They’re also out of milk, eggs and OJ _and_ the coffee machine is depressingly empty. Dean makes a note to go grocery shopping later and commits himself to the breakfast of champions; their last bottle of beer and dry cereal in the middle of the afternoon.

Except the cereal is like cardboard in his mouth, sharp against his gums and tasteless on his tongue, his jaw throbs and his teeth feel uncomfortable. He only manages two handfuls before he calls it quits.

Cas makes an appearance as he’s polishing off the beer. He looks less like a zombie than he did yesterday, but the dark shadows are still under his eyes.

“Morning, sunshine,” Dean greets. “I’d offer you coffee, but Sammy cleaned us out again. Sorry, buddy.”

“Actually, I was just heading out.”

He doesn’t sound particularly happy about it, and that softens the blow a little. Still doesn’t feel great that after all the progress Dean thought they’d made the last few days, Cas is leaving again.

Maybe Cas knows that. He didn’t walk out without warning, after all. And he offers Dean a small apologetic smile and explains;

“I just thought. We know Donatello can sense Chuck’s presence, right? But with him compromised, there’s only one place that monitors those kind of wavelength anomalies; Heaven.”

“Hmm,” Dean hadn’t thought of that. He tries to think of Heaven and the shattered remains of the God Squad as little as possible, as a rule. “You really think they’ll help us over the big G-man?”

“I don’t know,” Cas sighs. “Eremiel is reasonable, he’ll hear me out at least. But. The Angels that are left mostly keep to themselves. They refused to stand with God against the Darkness, and he abandoned them again shortly afterwards. They may once again choose to _die with dignity_.”

Cas doesn’t actually roll his eyes, but his exasperation is clear.

“Well, worth a shot,” Dean says. Then, because he’s a needy bitch, “Keep us in the loop?”

“I always do,” Cas says, like he hasn’t ignored their calls for the last two months. Does that thing where he manages to smile entirely with the squint of his eyes, the quirk of his eyebrow. “When you aren’t being insufferable.”

//

Sammy emerges not long after, hair damp but looking less washed out than last night. He agrees to throw some dinner together outta their emergency pantry while Dean runs out for essentials.

The Kwik Trip is only a few blocks away, easier than finding parking in Lebanon proper, and it has enough basics to get them by for a few days. The store is deserted besides Teddy behind the register and the kid isn’t much for forced small-talk, which Dean appreciates in a cashier.

Dean is starving after his aborted breakfast, but there’s a new display of chilli-chocolate candy bars and he can’t resist a nibble or two while Teddy rings him up.

He regrets it almost instantly. The chocolate melts thickly in his mouth, coats his teeth and pain flairs up around his molars, nagging and sharp. He soothes it with his tongue, hands over his card and then he’s got bigger worries because his hacked, unlimited, untraceable card is declined. Fuck.

Dean didn’t bring enough cash to cover his basket so Teddy confiscates his goods, leaves him empty-handed and wondering how the hell their reliable, no fuss card that’s worked flawlessly for 5 years is suddenly declined.

It feels strange, unexpected, but Dean doesn’t know enough about hacking credit cards to know for sure if it’s normal and it’s not like he can call Charlie to check. Bizarro Charlie is a genius hunter and strategist, but technology kinda grinds to a halt when your world is demolished by Angel nukes.

He’s still considering calling her anyway, just to check, when he’s nearly hamstrung by a guy way too old to be skateboarding and to top of a stellar trip, there’s a ticket stuck to Baby’s windscreen.

And sure, he parks in front of that hydrant every time, maybe it’s just the inevitable conclusion to a bad day, but then he gets home and Sam is ghost-pale and germy and somehow managed to burn both his hands, spoil dinner _and_ trash the kitchen in one fell swoop and suddenly their bad luck starts to smack of outside interference.

Dean watches Sam trip over a step he’s never tripped over once in their seven years in the bunker and he’s thinking witch, he’s thinking curse, he’s thinking maybe the universe just doesn’t want them to meddle with the balance and karma’s kickin’ their asses.

It isn’t until later - when Baby craps out on him, blows all her spark plugs at once, which is basically impossible at any given time and never mind that he tuned her up last week - that it really feels personal.

So personal, Dean knows in his bones that this is Chuck. Powered back up and stretching his God muscles.

And, of course the the first thing he does before he fucks off into the aether is to whammy them with the worst No Good Very Bad Day ever.

God’s a fucking Dick.

//

Garth asks them for help and God curse or not they can’t say no.

Last time Dean saw Garth, they were tying him up and tossing him in the trunk of the impala. Afterwards - after Dean tentatively took back control of his own body and Sam wouldn’t leave him alone for more than the span of a toilet break - Cas had headed back into Kansas City by himself to tie up lose ends, including taking Garth home.

Dean was grateful at the time but it feels a little awkward now, over a year later. Garth, though, is a saint, and forgives them without pause. Pulls Dean in for a hug like always, even if Sam pulls the sick card.

They haven’t seen Bess for years, but she looks good. And Garth mentioned his daughter when they roped him into spending Christmas on dangerous undercover mission but now he’s got three whole rugrats, damn. Cute, too, even if they are named after Sammy and Cas.

It’s nice to see him doing so well for himself. Great family, nice house, the werewolf version of a vegan community still going strong. Dean might have given up on this kind of picket fence a long time ago, but he’s still thinks this setup is kinda perfect.

Except for the beat up werewolf tucked up in the guest room.

He’s Bess’ cousin, apparently, and if he were human the gouges on his arms would have killed him. As it is, he’s lucky his attacker thought him dead and dumped his body without a double tap. Swamp stank or not, at least he’s alive.

Bess is pretty sure the wounds are from a wraith, and doesn’t that just raise a whole bunch of questions they’ll have to ask when Sleeping Beauty wakes up. Dean’s mulling it over, absently grabs at a bowl of candy by the bed and son of a bitch, that _hurts._

He doesn’t think anyone notices.

Sammy is guided away by Bess for some secret werewolf cold remedy, leaving Dean with Garth on the cosy, spacious landing and it’s so nice and _normal_ that he can’t not say anything.

“Y’know, I gotta say, aside from pincushion in there, this is pretty nice.”

“Yeah, better than I ever thought I’d get. I mean, hunting- I figure I’d be dead before I’m forty. Y’know, go out young and pretty,” Garth says, warm and fond where most people would sound jaded and bitter. “But now. I’ve got a great wife, great kids. I guess, sometimes things work out.”

“Yeah, sometimes,” Dean mutters. The glowing positivity of this morning has worn down a little under their pile of inconveniences, but he hopes it works out for them, somehow, too. Maybe not the little house on the prairie, but if Sam, Cas and him survive long enough to retire, that’d be nice. “It’s good man, you deserve it.”

“Yeah,” Garth agrees jovially, then all humour drops from his expression like a stone. “So, what’s up with your teeth?”

Dean always forgets that Garth was training to be a dentist before he fell into hunting. Apparently, he went back to school sometime between meeting Bess and hunting Michael, and he has a full on basement surgery thing going on for the in-laws.

He’s also real friggin’ insistent, manhandles Dean into the chair like he’s some waif and Dean’s never felt anything for Garth besides reluctant affection but Goddamn, he is suddenly uncomfortably aware that he has kink for strong men.

That unfortunate revelation is immediately tempered by the fact that Dean apparently has seventeen cavities. _Seventeen_. What the fuck.

Garth is happy to rectify that, whether Dean likes it or not. He pulls a plastic mask from nowhere.

“Deep breaths,” he soothes. And then everything goes fussy and dark.

//

Dean wakes up groggy and sore, with some vague fifties music stuck in his head and a weird urge to tap dance. His whole face feels numb and swollen, but Garth smiles at him and guides him up to the living room.

“So,” he says, half-jokingly. “Who did you guys piss off?”

Ain’t that a question.

Thankfully Dean has his mouth stuffed with cotton wool so Sam takes the hit, summarises the last 15 years as briefly as possible. Garth takes it on board like only Garth can; by designating himself a side-character and then casually mentioning that him and his super strong werewolf wife are into bondage. Ain’t that a picture.

And Dean wants to be offended for Garth, he’s done so much for them over the years. Too much. Like spending Christmas locked in a trunk. And he does it all with a smile and a hug and barely any questions asked.

But, hasn’t Dean had those same thoughts? Hasn’t he wondered if Alex and Jody and Claire fell into their lives by accident or were dragged into this mess by design? He honestly doesn’t know which is the better option; that Chuck might have these people lined up to be collateral whenever he needs a quick dramatic climax to his latest story, or that the only reason their friends have survived for this long is because God doesn’t find them interesting enough _characters_.

“See, the hero never sweats the small stuff,” Garth says. “It slows down the story!”

“So then, what happened?” Sam asks. Dean pulls bloody cotton swabs outta his tingly cheeks. “Chuck downgraded us?”

“Yeah, maybe! And now you’re--”

“Cursed,” Dean mumbles.

“No,” Garth chuckles. “Normal! For the first time in your lives you’re having normal-people problems.”

That still doesn’t feel quite right to Dean. Normal people don’t blow every single spark plug in one go, normal people don’t forget how to handle hot pans for no damn reason. But his lips feel like sausages and it’s not worth the debate.

Thankfully, the shish kebab in the bedroom wakes up and it gives them something to focus on besides their own shitty luck.

Brad has a chipped front tooth and a real bad attitude but when Sammy’s famous puppy-eyes fall flat, Bess has to qualms about digging her nails directly into her cousin’s open wounds, _damn._ It even works, and the douche spills about the Monster Fight Club.

“This place, where is it?” Sam asks, leaves the imploring eyebrows out this time. “I know you don’t want to tell us--”

“Belgrade, Minnesota. Old warehouse off Peach Street.”

“Well, that was easy.”

“Yeah, well. Lotta fangs in there, y’know. I figure you two walk in, they’re gonna rip you to pieces,” Brad laughs.

Bess gives him another hard nip. What a woman.

//

Garth doesn’t think they should go but “normal” or not, someone has to.

He does know a guy who can fix the engine sharpish, because _knowing a guy_ is Garth’s unofficial superpower.

Bess’ superpower is apparently making grilled cheese; she sends them off with a packed lunch and it is _amazing_ right up until it curdles in his belly and Dean finds himself crouching over the filthiest toilet he has ever thrown up in while held at gunpoint.

He still feels a little sick when Shifty the shifter and his looming bodyguard Vamp McFangs talk shit about them being a spectacle for the monster masses to enjoy, so Dean talks shit right back.

They might not be at their best right now, with Dean’s stomach trying to climb out his throat and Sam all left feet like hasn’t been since he turned 17, but they’re badass with a capital B. They’ve fought angels and demons on the reg, they’ve beaten alpha’s and the mother of all monsters and stopped more apocalypses than they can count.

Dean looked God in the eye and told him to fuck off, who does this weasely little shifter think he is?

Unfortunately, the Tyler Durden wannabe isn’t impressed, and Angel Face manhandles them into cells. He’s nice enough to give them separate rooms, and they even get an arena-view window each, yay. All the better to see how many creepy-crawlies come to the show as it starts to fill up more, and more. And more.

Once the anxiety starts to overtake the lingering dairy churning in his gut, Dean stops watching and starts feeling around the joins of his cage for anything loose and small enough to fit in a lock.

Except of course, _of course_ , he can’t even pick a lock now and that’s just petty.

Sam thinks maybe they never could, but Dean remembers the drills with dad, test after test after test, waking up handcuffed to the bed; to the radiator; to each other, until they kept bobbypins in their pockets out of habit and sewed lockpicks in the seams of their shirts and they could pick the cuffs blindfolded, hands behind their backs, and then John’d moved on to padlocks.

That shit is a hard-earned skill and Chuck took it away just to spite them.

And sure, this isn’t the ending he planned, but maybe Chuck lets them be destroyed by Megavamp on livestream to teach them a lesson. Maybe he brings them back afterwards and starts his play all over again, maybe he cuts his loses and moves on to a new universe but either way, Dean doesn’t want to die in a cage surrounded by fangers.

He doesn’t have to, as it turns out, because Garth is a fucking life-saver.

Garth snaps the locks right off the doors - and if Dean’s tummy twists a little, it’s probably leftover cheese - then he blows the building like a full on action movie hero.

Side character, Dean’s _ass_!


	14. Chapter 14

Garth insists on taking them back to his place, where Bess insists on making them breakfast.

Dean appreciates it, not least because his stomach is still aching uncomfortably and he can’t tell if it’s because of the swift kick to the balls or the lingering lactose intolerance. His throat is tender and sore and, judging from how Sam winces at him when they pass under Garth’s porch light, it’s bruising delightfully. Great.

Anyway. Point is, they don’t exactly have a solution to their bad luck situation yet, and in the mean time there isn’t much that can go horrifically, inconveniently wrong when they’re sat in a literally baby-proofed sitting room. Still, he thinks maybe they’re pushing it by getting them to hold the twins.

Werewolf genes or not, Dean hasn’t held an actual baby for a long time and these blonde haired little chunks manage to be both heavier than they look and somehow still feel incredibly small and fragile. He’s genuinely terrified that he might drop the kid on the pristine slate kitchen tiles.

He clutches Little Cas tightly to his chest - shut up, Sam - and the little guy stares intensely up at him with yellow-blue eyes that don’t look like real Cas’ at all - no really, _shut up_ Sam - until Dean smells something he is really not prepared to deal with and hands the baby back.

Bess takes over, thankfully, and Dean can breathe out again. She bids them goodbye and wishes them good luck and thanks them again even though they didn’t do anything useful except maybe motivate Garth to follow them to Minnesota.

But, recent questionable parenting choices aside, Dean likes Bess, and he knows she means well. He can’t bring himself to refuse when she hands him another bag of fresh grilled cheese for the road, so he wishes her well and, Christ, does he mean it. Their improbable little family deserves to be safe and happy.

Garth walks them out into the crisp morning air, and well. They might be dead by divine murder-suicide before they see him again, they can’t leave the guy still thinking he’s been playing second fiddle.

“Hey, listen, Garth. I just wanna say; what you did--”

“Aw, it was nothin’,” he says, but Sam doesn’t let him wave it off.

“Nothing?” he insists. “You saved us. And blew up a bunch of monsters. That’s not nothing, that’s--”

“That’s being a hero.”

Garth laughs like he still doesn’t quite believe them, says, “I guess I learned from the best,” and shrugs it off like water off a ducks back. “You guys gonna be okay?”

“What, because we’re ‘normal’?” Dean can’t quite rein in the scoff. Still doesn’t sound right.

“That,” Garth smiles, then all at once becomes serious again. “And because the Almighty is after you.”

When you put it like that, he’s probably entitled to his concern.

“Right, yeah, uh,” Sam says. “We… don’t know.”

Garth nods. Hesitates. Makes a decision.

“Listen. I wasn’t going to say this earlier, but there might be something that could help.”

He doesn’t sound sure, and he’s clearly reluctant to mention it. Dean has to ask, “What kinda something?”

“I heard this story once about this place you can go if your luck's gone bad.”

“What kind of place?” Sam asks, tentatively.

“Not sure,” Garth admits. “The guy who told me said it was in Alaska, on the road between Barrow and Kotzebue. He said _you’ll know it when you see it_ , whatever that means. Look, it might not even be real, you know how this stuff works. There’s always a catch.”

Yeah, there is.

But there’s a catch right now too; they could stop fighting, follow Chucks plan and live until he’s ready for the finale, but it’d be a messy, miserable, lonely life that would end in a messy, miserable, lonely death.

They say their goodbyes, get their patented Garth Hug and head to the impala. As he unlocks the car, Dean catches sight of Bess and Garth swaying softly together in the kitchen, happy and together and so clearly in love, and thinks he’d like to have that in the Bunker one day, maybe.

Maybe he can. They just need to loophole their way out of this curse, hunt down God and stop him from blinking them out of existence. Easy.

It’s a hell of a long shot, but it’s the only lead they’ve got.

“So,” Sam says. “Alaska?”

“Alaska.”

//

They head back home to resupply, but they don’t linger. Cas doesn’t seem to be back, so Sam scribbles a hasty note while Dean packs the car.

Dean digs up as much cash as they have stashed in the Bunker - a little over $800 and most of that will go on fuel. He sends Sam back for all their spare gas cans because they can save almost 30 cents per gallon if they stock up in Kansas, which might scrape them a motel room when they hit British Columbia, and Dean grabs the dregs of food left in the store cupboard.

It’s mostly the kind of stock rations they can’t make use of on the move. He takes what he can. It’s no marshmallows and mac and cheese but they’ve got a few bottles of water, the remnants of Dean’s jerky stash and three tins of spam, and they can pick up discounted bread at any corner store on the way. They’ve survived for longer on less.

The first leg of the journey is familiar territory; up through South Dakota, North Dakota and over the border into Manitoba like when they drove Jody to Asa Fox’s funeral. They only have to stop twice for Baby, which is better than Dean was hoping for, but it’s almost four hours added to an already excruciating three day trip and when they call it a night and settle in to _Le Motel l’automobile_ Dean is too frustrated and hungry to sleep properly.

He stares at baby’s roof, at the sliver of night sky he can see through the top of the window, and thinks. It’s become an unfortunate habit, lately.

The more he stews, the more convinced he is that Chuck’s curse is targeted. Sam, who jogs everyday, is suddenly tripping over his own feet. Sam, who prides himself on taking good care of his gigantor body, gets sick. Sam, who has carefully honed his natural empathetic response to practically an art form, gets mocked by the vic.

None of those things would work on Dean - he’s admittedly a little clumsy most days, his body is functional at best and he’s never been great at sympathy with the asshole witnesses anyway. No. Instead, Chuck took away his comfort blankets; his favourite foods and reliable old Baby.

Like when he lost his memories, he starts to slot himself back together with the clues, _My name is Dean Winchester and I love cheeseburgers and candy and my car_. Cas should be on that list too, but Dean is glad he isn’t here for this, if only to save himself the embarrassment of tripping and falling into Cas arms or some bullshit.

(Dean very carefully is _not_ thinking about whether Chuck is the reason Cas left again - he won’t ever know for sure, and he’s only just starting to claw his way out of that pit of doubt and despair.)

It settles him, in a weird way, this existential jigsaw puzzle. The big picture isn’t all there yet but he can play catchphrase with the pieces he has and they all scream one thing;

Chuck wants them weak. Which means he’s scared of them at their best.

Good. He fucking should be.

This curse is designed to distract them, keep them busy, but it’s all surface level shit.

Sure, maybe they can’t pick a lock or brawl like they used to, but they’re not completely useless. They have skills honed from necessity, from a life of limited funds and limitless travel.

When the satnav on Sam’s phone craps out 3 hours into the second leg of the journey, he still expertly navigates the huge old roadmap in the dash, finds a shortcut that saves them a couple hours. When Baby suddenly loses pressure in both right-side tires for no reason, Dean still patches her up quick and efficient, gets them moving again in no time.

The day after that, Dean charms the lady at the B&B into giving them free breakfast, and Sam somehow finds a wifi signal even though they’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Chuck wants them to suffer through colds and cavities, but while they can still walk and talk and function, they’re gonna keep on coming after him.

//

They find the place entirely by accident.

About 120 miles out from Barrow they hit the… Well. _Town_ is being generous - it’s fifteen houses and a diner huddled together against the endless frozen wilderness on all sides. But it’s also the last settlement marked on the map between here and the end of the road, and Dean ate the last sandwich three hours ago and he’s famished.

Their last $4.60 goes on a slice of pie and a single cup of coffee, but the waitress takes pity on a pair of broke drifters and brings them two mugs.

“Alright,” Sam says, still studying his map. “So, if Garth is right, we take this road. But, honestly, it doesn’t look like there’s anything up there.”

He tilts the map over so Dean can follow the path he traces, right up to a dead end. The waitress, ever helpful, picks that moment to drop off their pie.

“Hey,” Dean smiles at her. “How long have you lived here?”

“All my life,” she sighs, and Dean can almost see her evaluate all her life choices at once.

“Can you tell us what is up that road?”

“No,” she says, her shoulders tensing up in an instant. “Are you for real? Did Candy put you up to this?”

“No,” Sam is quick to reassure her. “Nobody put us up to this. We’re just headed that way and wanted to know if there’s anything up there.”

He clearly hasn’t lost all his social skills - she relaxes a fraction, smiles again.

“Forget it, sounds nuts.”

“Nuts is good,” Dean says, and that’s all the prompting she needs to dish on the local urban legend.

//

The pool hall at the end of the universe looks like every other ramshackle backroads gambling den from the outside, creaky boards and faded paint and all. It might be a get-lucky-or-die-trying magic deal situation, or people might just lose the last of their money here and then wander despairingly into the moors to die all on their own.

Only one way to find out.

Inside is nicer, marginally. The wood trim is shabby, the wallpaper peeling, but the floor isn’t sticky and the felt on the tables is neat and well fitted.

The bartender, Evie, seems friendly enough and when Dean asks after a game she directs them to a man named Pax with no hesitation. Pax is a well built dude with a confident air about him, but he doesn’t seem overtly threatening.

Then he explains the rules, and of course he isn’t threatening, the treat is implicit;

You win, you get lucky. You lose, your luck runs out, and then you stumble back to the real world and whatever fatal misfortune awaits you.

“Questions?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam says. “What is this place? Who owns it?”

“I just work here,” Pax shrugs, cool as a cucumber. “Hey, you don’t like it, the door’s open.”

“When I win,” Dean says, because this is a given. “Can I split it, the luck?”

“It’s yours. You can do what you want.”

Yeah, this is good. Hell, this is great! This is better than he ever dared to hope, might actually be worth the almost 4000 mile roadtrip.

But;

“Just give us a second,” Sam says, tugs Dean away and whispers frantically _No no no, no way, no_ and Dean isn’t seeing the problem here.

“We need this,” Dean snaps. “And you know it!”

It might be an exaggeration to says he’s been playing pool since before Sammy was born, but only a slight one all things considered. Dad never let a coupla snot nosed kids stop him from trawling bars for leads, and Sam might have been happy with his books and his imagination but Dean needed to be keeping his hands busy.

As soon as he was tall enough to reach the tables, pool was that ready-made distraction in bars the country over. And Dean is good at it, he knows he is.

“Look, I know you’re better than me at pretty much everything, okay? That’s okay!” he says, because it sounded a little harsher than he means it. “I’m not mad, I’m proud! But I can wipe the floor with you when it comes to pool.”

Sam scoffs, but doesn’t argue. He might be able to out-research Dean any day of the week, but he knows Dean is right about this. He shakes his head, sighs out a slow breath and it’s as good a go-ahead as Dean is gonna get.

“Alright, pal,” he tells Pax. “Let’s give this a go.”

//

Of course, it’s not that simple.

They hang around the red game table for a hour with no biters. It’s not like they can even afford a drink or two to pass the time, even, and Dean doesn’t do well with waiting. Everyone in here is wary and suspicious, but he figures they’re also desperate and if there’s one thing he’s aces at it's playing at dumb and careless.

He fumbles a shot, makes it noisy. Stage whispers, “I dunno, Sammy, I might be a little rusty,” and then looks back at the other patrons and cringes like he didn’t mean to speak so loudly.

A few of the more rag-tag looking fellas seem like they might be weighing him up, but it’s the older woman at the bar that downs her drink and saunters over.

“Rack ‘em up,” she says, voice more subdued than her body language.

She’s attractive, there’s no denying that, but she’s also weirdly vibrant. Everyone else here seems to fade into the woodwork, hopeless and diminished. Not this woman. Maybe she hasn’t been here as long.

“Moira,” she introduces herself, sticks a hand out.

“Dean,” he says, takes it.

She purses her lips, trying to read him probably. “What you playing for, Dean?”

“Same as everybody else,” he replies. Racks up the balls. “Better luck.”

Moira doesn’t talk much after that, so Dean doesn’t either. As challenger, she breaks. It’s not a bad shot, but the follow up falls flat and after that Dean has free run of the table.

“Damn it,” she mutters to herself, and the both of them watch the coins flash with whatever magic runs this place.

Dean almost feels bad, but this is what they came here for.

He joins Sammy at the bar for a celebratory glass of free water, but he quickly sours Dean’s brief taste of victory. Apparently while Dean was busy winning them back some desperately needed good luck, Sam was getting cryptic warnings from the bartender.

It’s a trap. Yeah, no shit it’s a trap. But they are the starving mice looking at that big ol’ tasty cheese and without it they’re going to die. Sometimes you know a trap is a trap, but you gotta trip the wire and rig the system.

In this case, the tripwire is a guy named Joey Six.

Joey is a chill dude hanging quietly in a corner nursing a drink - he hasn’t moved since they got here but everyone who walks past nods at him. He’s the big kahuna, no doubt.

If Dean can take out the frontrunner, they can score big and get out before their luck turns and they’re sucked into the background of this place like everybody else.

“Hey man,” Dean says, leans casual-like against the wall next to Joey.

The stoic motherfucker tips his hat up slightly in greeting, the coolest Wild West shit, but Dean smothers his inner cowboy fanboy. Business first.

“I, uh. Hear you’re the biggest fish in this pond,” Dean says, makes sure it’s not a question. “Figure I skip the tiddlers and catch me a real challenge.”

“I saw you beat Moira,” Joey says, steady.

Dean doesn’t know if that’s a compliment or a judgement, a yes or a no.

Joey looks at him for a long time, then polishes off his drink and heads for the red table. Dean knows he’s picked the right mark when the other players start to gather round - they want to see the star player in his element.

The old dude is pretty good. Better than Moira. Chattier too, but only because he thinks he’s gonna distract Dean from the game by talking about bull riding. He can try, but Dean is pretty good at talking the talk and walking the walk.

Except then he goes and misses, fuck.

“Good times,” Joey drawls, but then he misses too, ha! “And some not so good.”

He doesn’t seem too upset, has the cue ball tucked into the corner nice and tight. But Joey Six doesn’t know how many countless, bored hours Dean has spent haunting bars and roadhouses, making his own fun with more and more complicated trick shots.

Dean weighs it up. He’s sober, he’s pulled off similar shots before. It’s doable.

Joey must be more worried than he looks, though, because he waits until Dean is lined up and then takes a gamble.

“Double or nothin’ says you miss that shot.”

“You tryin’ to hustle me, Rodeo?”

He smiles then, small but genuine. “I thought you were gonna kick my ass?”

Oh yeah, Dean likes him.

“Alright,” he says, _if you insist._

Dean makes the shot, jumps the blockade and pots the eight.

The crowd cheers. Dean’s shares a look with Sam across the room, sees his brother mirror his own sigh of relief. Fast Eddie does it again.

“Hell of a shot,” Joey says, and before Dean can say _hey, man, good game_ the magic activates, vibrates though the whole floor and glows brighter than Moira’s coin and when it’s done, Joey’s coin is completely blank.

The room goes hushed, suddenly, and Joey reaches for the newly smooth token slowly, like it might bite him. He clutches it in his fist, turns and leaves without another word.

Dean grabs his own coin, then him and Sam follow the old-timer out to the porch.

“Good game,” he says when he sees Dean. His breath sounds oddly laboured, more suited to scoring the winning home run than losing a pool game. “Guess you can hustle a hustler.”

Joey turns his coin over in his fingers, then sets it on the bench with his hat, a soldier retiring his weapon. Then he explodes into a coughing fit, wipes his mouth with his hand and pulls it away bloody.

“Let an old man die in peace, huh?”

“Wait, you’re dying?” Sam says.

“Cancer,” Joey replies, taps himself on the chest. Laughs. “Came out here to beat it. Did win me an extra year. Been saving this.”

He pulls a singe cigarette out of his pocket, sticks it in his mouth, coughs again before he can light it.

“Dammit,” he croaks. “No light.”

“Here,” Dean tosses him his. “Anything we can do?”

“Sure,” Joey coughs, looking greyer by the second. “Leave me be.”

Yeah, this place ain’t simple at all.

//

If the world was a fair and decent place, they should be won and done right about now.

But they’re not, because it isn’t.

The luck they accidentally killed a guy for isn’t even enough to get Baby back to the diner. And now Sammy’s got himself a case to work, people to save, and never mind that they have bigger fucking fish frying right now.

Every hunter out there has a hero complex, and Sammy’s is bigger than most. When Dean gets back from his frustratingly short drive, Sam is trying to talk the other patrons out of whatever reason brought them to the end of the Earth.

He doesn’t seem to be having much more luck with that than anything else.

But he does take two whole seconds to process Dean’s annoyance and then slots everything into place with his big ol’ nerd brain - whoever runs the joint is skimming the luck. The House always wins.

 _Who_ is a littler trickier, but Sam has a good guess there too - their coins are dedicated to Fortuna, Goddess of Luck. Which leaves the real tricky job of luring her out, but that too is made easier when sweet, cryptic Evie the bartender lets slip that she’s never met the owner, but Pax is her son.

Dean grabs an angel blade from the car and it’s no sweat for Sam to distract the demigod while Dean sneaks up behind him and presses the cold metal against his neck.

“Where’s your mom?” Sam asks in his best _I want to speak to the manager_ voice, and when he doesn’t answer, Sam invokes her directly. “Fortuna!”

“We have your son,” Dean adds, for good measure.

Pax sighs, maybe he thinks he isn’t good enough leverage, but mommy dearest turns up anyway - Moira. Dean might have known the two most attractive people in this backwater were deities.

She holds herself differently now, confident and strong; spine straighter, chin higher, arms crossed carelessly across her chest. Before she seemed more alive than the other, now she radiates power.

“Fortuna?”

“That’s one of my names,” she concedes.

“We know you’re skimming luck,” Sam says. “Off what _we_ won. We want it back.”

Dean tightens his grip on the blade, “Or I kill him.”

“Well you probably could,” she says, carelessly. “His daddy was human.”

“Mom,” Pax tries, and Dean almost feels for the guy. Mommy clearly doesn’t.

“Sorry baby. I can always make more sons.”

Ouch. But if she’s bluffing, it’s a damn good one. Dean believes her, and Pax seems like a decent demi-dude, so Dean drops the blade and hedges his bets.

“Play me for it.”

She clearly has a thing for calculated gambles, he’s hoping she also rises to blatant dares.

“I played you already.”

“Then we go again.”

“When I play someone, I get a read on them,” Fortuna says, mocking. “And you. You’re just a beach read. Sexy, but skimmable.”

“Beach read?” Really? This lady doesn’t know him any better than Chuck does - they both think he’s made up of junk food and cars and rustic little joints like this. And maybe some of him is, but one brush stroke doesn’t make a Picasso and one sentence doesn’t tell a whole story. “Lady, I’m Tolstoy.”

“Ha! Very funny,” she dismisses him, stalks over to Sammy and no no no no. “This one here could be interesting.”

“Wait, no, no--” Dean starts, but Sam cuts him off.

“Fine. Yeah, I’ll play.” He pauses, meets the goddess’ eyes. “But not for our luck. For the lives of everybody in here.”

“No!” she says immediately. “Only for your luck. And if you lose, your lives are mine. You threatened my baby, my livelihood. An example must be made.”

Dean watches Sam clench his teeth, watches the dimple appear and then disappear on his jaw, and knows where this is going.

“So. You in?”

//

Fortuna was clearly going easy in her down-on-her-luck disguise, but not too easy. Sammy’s no pushover, though, and he pots two on the break. He follows it up with two more, atta boy, and Fortuna goes from Mostly-Mute Moira to a regular Chatty Cathy.

“So, why do you need this luck so bad? Girlfriend problems?” she slides her eyes to where Dean is standing sentinel behind Sam. “Boyfriend problems?”

Okay, so maybe she read him a little deeper than booze, boobs and bacon, but still. It’s distraction, and it’s not gonna work for her any better than it worked for Joey Six. Dean keeps his mouth shut, forces himself to breathe slowly through his nose and keep calm, wills Sam to do the same.

“Accursed by God,” Sam says, and then misses his shot. Fuck.

“Life’s a bitch,” Fortuna mocks. “And then you die.”

She’s being glib, thinks they’re spouting purple prose. Well, she wants to get chatty, Dean can do chatty.

“ _The God_ ,” he emphasises. “Literally cursed us.”

“You’ve met?”

“Yeah. Little guy, squirrelly as hell.”

“That’s him,” she murmurs, lines up her next shot, but she’s getting twitchy now. “Well, welcome to the club.”

“Club?” Dean presses, but she makes the pot before she answers.

“Yes, the club. _God_ created the world, but you know who created us gods? You did, you humans. Sort of.”

She circles the table, stops to casually sink the next ball, then continues.

“When you apes first climbed down from the trees you didn’t pray to him. You prayed to the sun, the womb, the rain, the stars. Well at first the Creator was furious. How _dare_ you not recognise his beneficence.”

Another shot, another score.

“But soon enough, he birthed us.”

“Why?”

“Why?” she snarls, lines up again, sloppy this time. “Why-” and she misses.

The room itself seems to take a breath. Fortuna sighs.

“To take the blame. Harvest fails? Stillborn child? Our bad, not his.”

Yeah, that sounds likes Chuck. Sam paces, eyes his next move. Fortuna keeps ranting, now they’ve found a sore spot.

“But his ego could only handle that for so long. Now he’s happy to survive on whatever religion has the best syndication deal.” Sam pots one while she expositions them. “Most gods, they’re forgotten. But I’m old,” she isn’t even watching as Sam makes another shot. “I hold a grudge.”

The ball clicks into the pocket, snaps Fortuna back to the here and now. She assesses the table in a few quick glances, then visibly shrugs off memory lane and tosses a bitter smile at Dean.

“Oh well. What’re you gonna do.”

“We’re gonna fight him,” Dean tells her.

The look on her face is worth the honestly.

“Oh, are you now!” she goads, gleeful at the revelation. “And when you lose?”

“We lose swinging,” Sam says from behind her. “Eight ball, corner pocket.”

Sam lines up, takes an awful, eternal second to glance up at Dean, then takes the shot.

Dean needn’t have worried. Sam simmers quietly, pours the overflow into whatever he needs to get done. The 8 ball drops into the pocket smooth as fucking butter.

“You little minx,” Fortuna curses. “Got me talking. You’re good.”

“Learned it from my brother,” Sam says confidently, and Jesus H Christ, Dean is proud of the kid. Proud of the man his kid brother has grown in to.

“Alright, you know the deal,” he tells Fortuna. “Even up.”

She isn’t done yet though.

“What do you say we make it interesting?”

The luck of heroes, she says. Double or nothing, she says.

“Double?” Dean says. He shares a look with Sam over the goddesses shoulder. Reminds him, “That’s how the cowboy died.”

But this is Sam’s game, it’s Sam’s call. Dean trusts him, he needs to step back and let Sam make the choice.

Sammy, of course, makes his own choice, “Yeah, deal. But not for more luck. For them. If I win, you have to let them go.”

“Honey, I’m not stopping them.”

“Okay, then when I win, you give back the luck you stole.”

“What is with you and these losers?! They’re nothing, they don’t matter!”

“They matter to me,” Sam says, firm.

“They matter to us,” Dean backs him up.

Fortuna looks between them, shrugs.

“Fine. Rack ‘em up.”

//

The goddess of luck does not lose twice in a row.

Since Sam won, she breaks and she does not let him have even a sniff at the table. She doesn’t speak at all, barely even looks up to see if they’re still watching, just makes shot after shot after shot.

“Well, what did you think was gonna happen?” she says, mic-drops the pool cue.

“We had to try,” Dean says, squares up. She wants them dead, she better believe they’re gonna fight.

Only, she doesn’t try anything.

She says, “Well that was stupid,” and walks back upstairs.

Everybody just stares after her, then at the empty stairwell, until a door slams somewhere above them.

“We should go,” Dean says, after a minute.

“Yeah, we should,” Sam agrees, then turns to Evie and says quietly, “We’ll come back. We’ll find something.”

Outside, it’s still daylight. It feels like they’ve been in that dark little shack for weeks, but no; it’s only been one evening, and the sun is rising same as it always does. It’s a sunrise Dean honestly wasn’t sure he was going to see.

“I thought she was gonna kill us.”

“Yeah, well, she doesn’t have to. Our luck will do that on it’s own. Dean, we can’t just-”

“Leave ‘em? No, I know.”

They have no lore books in the car except a few journals, and he’s been through dad’s and Bobby’s enough to know they never went up against the manifestation of luck herself. They’ll have to comb the interweb, and even Sam’s psychic wifi signal doesn’t get bars way out here.

“Okay, lets go find some wifi and see what kills Lady Luck. We’ll circle back and--”

He hasn’t finished the thought when the door squeaks open, and out totters Evie looking like she hasn’t seen the sky in decades. Hell, maybe she hasn’t.

The other patrons follow, similarly shell-shocked looks on their faces.

“Hey,” Sam says, gently. “Wha-what’s going on? What happened?”

“She…” Evie blinks. “She shut it down.”

“What?”

“Why?”

“Because of you,” Evie tells them. “She said she thought your kind had gone extinct.”

“Our _kind_?” Sam asks.

Evie turns her big, green doe eyes on him. “Heroes.”

Huh.

“And, and she gave me a message. She said ‘ _don’t play his game, make him play yours’,”_ and Evie hands them them a token.

It’s bigger, more defined than the last. Heavier too, the weight of responsibility. But also the promise that they might actually have a way out of this snuff movie.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! 
> 
> Firstly, thank you so much for all the comments on the last few chapters! Life is, well, life, and I haven't had chance to reply to them for ages, but I read them all and they are all appreciated so so much! 
> 
> Secondly, I'm almost done with this story, so fingers crossed it'll be weekly updates again until the end. 
> 
> Enjoy!

With Baby back in action, the drive home to Kansas is smooth sailing.

Better, even, with food in their bellies and gas money in their pockets. Hell, after the week they’ve had, it’s practically a vacation! A good, old fashioned roadtirp; soft rock blasting from the speakers and Sam snoring contentedly beside him, the open road and the ever-changing horizon.

They stop for gas halfway down the 281, and Sam doesn’t even argue when Dean grabs a handful of scratchers and then steers him towards the burger joint. Two double cheeseburgers in and he hasn’t puked and that is a low fucking bar for being considered lucky but good god _damn_ , Dean will take it.

Sam mans the wheel for the last leg, while Dean systematically scratches away at his cards - not a single line, go figure - and Dean is just bitching that Fortuna stiffed them again when they get the most unexpected win of all.

Cas steps out of the shadows, solemn as the grave, and Dean has just enough time to think _what now_ before Jack steps into the lamp light.

 _Jack._

Alive and breathing and looking cautiously at them with eyes that aren’t melted out of his skull.

//

He’s been in the empty, he tells them.

 _Hiding._

Because Death and an ancient cosmic entity have some kind of deal where they feed Jack angel hearts like candy, ‘roid him up good and proper, then point him at Chuck and let them fight to the death.

There’s so much to unpack there that Dean doesn’t know where to start. Sam does though;

“You _ate_ their hearts?”

“I--” Jack says, carefully. “I had to.”

The kid picks at his beer bottle, scratches at the table, taps his fingers on his knees. Does everything he can to avoid looking at them directly.

Dean can’t exactly blame him, his own insides are a mess of wriggling regret and anxiety. The last time they looked each other in the eyes, Dean was trying to kill him.

He looks to Cas instead, sat at Jack’s side, steadfast and supportive. He catches Dean looking, offers him a small smile. Dean tries to return it, tries to project _not angry, just processing_ , but his face is uncooperative, feels stiff and forced.

“You could have called us,” Sam says, brimming with sympathy, but the wriggling in Dean’s stomach suddenly hardens into a solid mass.

“Every day, I wanted to come home,” Jack says. The mass squirms. “But I couldn’t.”

Dean braces for him to say _Because I didn’t think I was welcome, because you locked me in a box, because the last thing I remember before I burned out of my body is Dean pressing a magic gun to my head_.

What he actually says is, “If I don’t stay hidden, if I use my powers… my grandfather, he’ll know I’m back and he’ll try to kill me. Again.”

It’s reasonable, as these things go.

It doesn’t stop the hard, cold feeling in Dean’s gut.

The dread only worsens when Jack goes on, repetition that borders robotic, “If I do exactly what she says, if I follow her plan. Death says I’ll get stronger, and I’ll be able to kill God.”

Heavy silence fills the room. Guilt and dread, past and future, mingle together, churn nauseatingly.

Nothing good ever comes from these deals. Nothing good ever comes from breaking them. But they keep coming back to the same choices.

“Well,” Cas says, too loudly. Claps Jack on the shoulder, smiles at the kid lopsided and oh so gentle. “We’re not gonna kill God tonight. Come on, we should get some clean sheets for your bed.”

He leads Jack away and the second they’re out of sight, Sam explodes into restless motion.

“What the fuck, Dean?” he whisper-shouts. “What the _fuck_?”

“I don’t know, man,” Dean says. “What I do know is; I need another drink.”

Sam doesn’t even bitchface at him, which probably goes to show how much he’s struggling to wrap his brain around this new problem.

Dean grabs a beer, slumps down at the kitchen table. Sam opts for pacing irritably between the doorway and the counter and back again.

“These deals never work out for us,” Sam rages. “You know that! Hell, _Jack_ should know that!”

And, well. It’s not like they haven’t spent decades making shitty deal after shitty deal. They can’t really harangue Jack for the same thing.

“Yeah, well,” Dean sips at his beer. “We never learned that lesson easy, either.”

“So we just let him make the same mistakes? We’re supposed to teach him better!”

“Little late for that.”

Sam slams his knuckles into the chrome worktop.

“How are you being so damn calm about this?!”

“I don’t know.”

He really doesn’t.

Dean’s been so focused lately on not steeping himself in anger lately that he thinks maybe it’s working. Problem is, he hasn’t found anything to replace it with yet. He knows he should be boiling over, but instead he’s just kinda… numb.

“I don’t know, Sammy,” he says again. “ But we don’t exactly have a plan B here.”

“What’s plan A? Keep Jack locked up here until Billie decides to set him on Chuck like an attack dog?”

“I suppose,” Cas says, stepping in to the room. “We could always send him out now and let Chuck burn him out again.”

“No, Cas,” Sam deflates. “Of course not. I’m thrilled he’s back, really.”

Cas nods, accepts the unspoken apology.

“I’m not without doubts myself,” Cas says, measured. “But it might be our only chance to stop Chuck. And Jack believes this is the way.”

“I still don’t like it,” Sam sighs.

“Which part,” Dean mutters into his beer. “Jack’s deal with Death, or the part where she’s got him eating angel hearts?”

Cas makes a disgusted sound in his throat, very unangelic. “The hearts were disturbing.”

“So what’s next?” Sam says, arms flapping. “We’re just supposed to trust her?”

“Well apparently Billie has Jack on a need-to-know. Which; not a shock,” Dean says. “We’ve made deals with cosmic players before, cards up ain’t their style.”

Billie usually has a plan, though. She just isn’t the sharing and caring type.

“Jack still doesn’t have a soul,” Sam says, and even though Dean knew, hearing it out loud makes that newly hollow place in his gut echo. “And now he’s been in the empty for months! We have no idea where his head is right now.”

“I have my concerns,” Cas says. “But Jack trusts Billie. And I trust Jack.”

His confidence is contagious. Dean almost buys that Death, an angel-human hybrid and an unknown entity will save the universe no questions asked.

Sam isn’t so easily swayed.

“But what about cosmic balance, Cas?” he snaps. “I mean, Jack’s gonna kill God? What about Amara?”

That’s a good question, a no doubt vitally important one, but it’s been a helluva week and Dean can’t muster the brain power right now. Right now, he just knows that Death commands respect and Billie has proven herself worthy of that respect.

“I dunno,” he says. Stands and leans against the table so it feels less like mom and dad are arguing over his head. “I dunno. But I have seen Billie’s Library, and I have spent time with her. I-- Well, _trust_ is a strong word, but I… Believe in her. There’s no one more committed to the rules than she is. She’s probably got it all figured out.”

“Probably?” Sam scoffs. “What, like she had the ma’lak box figured out?”

“Yeah,” good point. “I don’t know. But she’s still Death. She was right about Rowena.”

Cas nods, but the reminder does nothing to improve Sam’s mood.

“All I’m saying,” he says, tersely. “is that I wish we knew more.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. “I got questions too. But right now, this is the only plan we got.”

“Right,” Sam says, purses his whole friggin face and flounces out of the kitchen like he used to end fights with John back when Dean was still the tall one.

Dean polishes off his beer. Cas frowns at the empty doorway.

“He doesn’t seem happy.”

“He is,” Dean says. “Trust me, he’s glad to have Jack back, really he is. But. You picked a hell of a week to vanish, buddy. It’s been a real fuckin’ trip. Sammy just needs a breather.”

Cas doesn’t look convinced.

“C’mon,” Dean says. “We need a proper drink if we’re gonna celebrate.”

//

“Blessed by a goddess of luck,” Cas muses to the library in general.

The soft lamplight blunts the sharp edges of exhaustion carved into his face lately, makes him look relaxed in a way Cas rarely does. Dean can’t takes his eyes off the strong profile of his nose, the shadow of his unclenched jaw, the gentle glow of his cheekbone.

Cas is beautiful here, safe and satisfied, basking in an unexpected win.

“It certainly can’t hurt,” Cas says, cuts a look at Dean over the fancy decanter. “Given our goal is to overthrow the creator of the universe.”

“I admit I had my doubts,” Dean laughs. “But we didn’t think Jack was ever coming back from that. Ever. So coming home to this? Fortuna’s blessing might just be the real deal after all.”

Cas smile at him indulgently, swirls his whisky like he’s thinking about actually drinking it. Dean sinks back into the leather of his chair. This is a good moment, he’s going to enjoy it.

“I knew it, Dean,” Cas says, suddenly. “When I was with Jack’s mother, she-- Kelly just had _faith_. That Jack would be good for the world. And I felt it too, I _knew_ _it._ ”

Cas looks a little frantic, bright and wild with conviction. Dean wants to kiss him.

“And then, when everything went wrong, when God took him from us, I- I was. _Lost_ in a way I’ve never been before because I knew the story wasn’t over I knew Jack wasn’t done! I was _right_.”

Ah.

This is another of those holes Dean punched in the drywall and wallpapered over without fixing.

But something in the gentleness of the atmosphere, the buzz of contentment in his skin, or maybe just his tiny, cowardly heart stops him from saying _I didn’t mean that, I was angry and sad and lost and you were an easy target because you always put up with my shit even when you shouldn’t and I am so fucking sorry_.

“Well,” he says instead, offers up his glass in toast. “Here’s to being right.”

Cas’ eyes soften, and he looks at Dean like he can see through his soul, and when he clinks their tumblers together it feels like forgiveness.

“And,” Dean smirks, lift his glass again. “Here’s to payback.”

Cas purses his lips, pulls his own hand back.

“Oh, what? Revenge doesn’t sound good to you?”

“What sounds good to me,” Cas says, exasperated but playfully so. “Is Jack fulfilling his destiny.”

And, well. Destiny isn’t usually a concept that holds much water in Dean’s book. But he trusts Cas, and he doesn’t want to break the peace.

“Yeah, but, icing on the cake?” he suggests. Cas offers him another of those indulgent smiles, shakes his head. “C’mon. Chuck wanted Cain and Abel, and now we’re going all biblical on him! Killed by his own grandson, sounds right to me.”

“It does sound… karmic,” Cas says, and finally takes a drink.

He pulls his face a little, swallows. Knocks back the rest.

“Whoa, buddy, take it easy!”

“ _You_ said we were celebrating,” he accuses.

“Yeah,” Dean laughs. “ _Celebrating_. Not getting shitfaced!”

Cas laughs too, and it’s been so long since Dean got to enjoy the crinkles around his eyes that the sudden brightness of Cas’ beautiful, lamp-lit face almost takes his breath away.

“Screw Chuck!” he says, without thinking. “Fuck his dark, gritty, _miserable_ endings! This is it, man. This right here, _this_ is the endgame. Family, _home_. Jack alive and Sammy safe and you and me--”

“Dean.”

Cas looks pained, and yeah, okay, maybe Dean’s running away with himself.

“Just. All of us, safe and home,” Dean says. Catches Cas’ eyes and holds them. “Together, Cas.”

Cas drops his gaze to his hands, cradling his empty glass. “Listen, Dean--”

And then the phone rings, and because the universe can’t let them have a single moments peace, Jody says, “Dean, I’m in trouble.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wild update appeared!
> 
> I'm not dead! ~~15x18 tried it's best tho jfc how we feeling fam?~~ Sorry, I suck at sticking to a schedule apparently. One more canon-plot chapter to wrestle into coherence (and yes, unfortunately, its a RTP episode) and then we take a sharp left from canon. Lets just say I'll update when I update, huh?

Dean grabs Sam from his room and they hoof it to Sioux Falls quicker than they ever have.

Jody is exactly where she said she’d be, tied up and gagged in a stinking old barn but alive, she’s alive.

He’s almost not surprised when it’s Dark Kaia who jumps out of the darkness at them. It’s nearly predictable now how fucking bad her timing is, always showing up to complicate matters when they’ve already got a heap of shit on their plates.

She wants to collect on their bargain - the spear that they broke for Jack’s help that they can’t offer. Well, bad news for her. Even if they _could_ help, Dean ain’t exactly feeling accommodating when he can see the nasty purple bruising all up Jody’s face.

But then she throws them for a double loop; her world is dying, and she knows that because she sees it through Real Kaia’s dreams.

//

By mutual agreement, they handcuff Not-Kaia and leave her in the kitchen with a year old fashion magazine Jody dug outta her dash.

Cas basically reorganised the archives single-handedly before their last face-to-face with Chuck, so he takes Jody down to there to see if they’ve got any more hand-of-God level artefacts squirrelled away.

Sam and Dean slump unenthusiastically into the library. Jack follows them, chatters as he pulls books from shelves like he hasn’t been gone for months. It’s more awkward than prom night at a nunnery. Jack has been back all of three hours, the ma’lak box sized elephant sits happily unaddressed in the room, and somehow, still neither of them have the heart to tell Jack that they searched every one of these books forwards and backwards and fucking upside down when he was stuck in apocalypse world, and came up nothing.

The one and only way they have ever opened a viable portal is by nephalim power or archangel juice, and the later they don’t have unless Cas’ creepy shaman comes through. The former, well. All the more frustrating; he’s right here, full battery and mostly compos mentis and hell, he even wants to help.

And Death says they can’t do it.

So instead, they’re stuck with the same gigantic tomes they’ve scoured before and the stifling, suffocating tension of being stuck in a room with someone you tried to murder sits heavily on Dean’s soul.

He just. Can’t. Stop. Thinking about it.

He stares at the faded words until they blur, until the lines read _He’s just a kid_ and _He killed Mom_ and _You held a gun to his head_ and _He still doesn’t have a soul, he’s going to hurt someone again if you can’t keep him in check and it will be your fault_ ** _ **again**_** _._

Guilt and dread make for a noxious mixture, churning in his stomach, his head, his heart. As desperately as Dean wants to do better by Jack, he can’t exactly give him the benefit of the doubt again. They all ignored those early warning signs, last time, and it got mom dead.

It’s probably a good thing for Dean’s blood pressure that the kid’s enthusiasm doesn’t last. By the time he finds his fourth dead end - Mandragora liver, no dice - Jack is visibly deflated, and Dean’s shoulders ache from trying not to hunch right up to his ears.

“Hey,” Dean suggests, thinks he keeps his tone on the better side of neutral. “Why don’t you go see if Cas and Jody are having any luck?”

He doesn’t look happy about it, but he goes. On any other kid, the sulky pout would probably fall somewhere between exasperating and amusing. Dean has the terribly hypocritical thought that, on Jack, it’s a stark reminder that they need to keep his temper in check.

“We’re not finding anything,” Dean sighs, blows dust particles everywhere.

“I know,” Sam agrees, and it sounds like _we knew we wouldn’t_.

They’re up against the exact problem they knew was coming. No archangel, no grace. And Michael is who even knows where.

“Listen,” Sam says. “I can try to jerry-rig up some magic, using a substitute. Then again, the only substitute that would stand a chance of working is--”

“Nephilim grace, yeah.”

“Yeah,” Sam huffs. “And I’m guessing that would be against Billie’s rules, so.”

“We’re batting zero,” Dean says. Resists the urge to bang his head down on the table, just. Concussion isn’t going to help anybody.

Sam breathes slowly out through his nose, taps his restless fingers over the pages of his book.

“There’s something else,” he says. “I’m worried about Jack. I think I heard him talking to somebody earlier. In his room.”

“Billie?”

“I dunno. Maybe. I- I didn’t see anybody. But--”

“He’s still soulless.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, quietly. “Yeah. I mean, it- it sounds like he thinks he’s doing the right thing here. But does he really _know_ , y’know?”

Ain’t that the question.

//

Apparently, it’s a question the universe decides they deserve an answer to not half an hour later, when Jack strides purposefully back through the library and declares;

“I’m saving Kaia.”

He’s already used his powers to dreamwalk, he’s seen for certain that real Kaia is still alive, and, oh yeah, apparently he has a reaper nanny now.

A real rude one, too, and Dean never thought he’d miss chirpy, useless Jessica but at least she was nice. The new one, Merle, is a snarky, stone faced tattle-tail.

“Try it,” she sneers. “And I’ll tell Death.”

“Okay,” Jack says, and Merle looks real smug for all of 20 seconds before Jack jumps through a loophole so quickly and neatly, Dean can’t help but be impressed. “Go. In the meantime, I’ll open a rift to the Bad Place. I’m sure Billie will appreciate hearing about it after the fact, when it’s already too late.”

“Okay,” the reaper nods, narrows her eyes. “And how about I just stop you right now?”

And for all his power, Jack doesn’t usually look all that threatening, but he does when he steps towards her, says plainly, “You can try. Run to Billie, tell her everything went sideways on your watch and see how she reacts. What she decides to do to you. Or,” he says, cheerful and bland again. “Help us. Help us find the safest, smartest way to pull this off and she never has to know.”

Damn. The kid might not have a soul, but that is a script-flip even Sammy might not have pulled off.

“Now that’s Winchester stupid,” she snaps, but it’s not a no.

“But?”

“But there might be a way,” she concedes. Straightens up importantly. “The cosmic warding. That Amara peeled off the walls and somehow you’ve all been too stupid to repair.”

“Uh, we fixed that,” Dean tells her. It took them weeks of research and careful, delicate sigil work.

“Oh you fixed part of it,” Merle takes great delight in correcting him. “You slapped up some anti-demonic, monster warding. You didn’t come close to restoring the original cosmic grade stuff.”

“Okay, then how do we restore it?” Sam asks.

“Well you can’t,” she laughs. “Not permanently. But I know how to get it back up. For a while.”

//

It’s a combination - a spell to power up what’s left of the existing warding, then Merle and Cas act as batteries to keep the lights on as long as they need.

“And all this will keep us off Chuck’s radar?” Dean asks her.

“Better hope so,” she says, and it’s the most genuine she’s sounded since she got here.

Between Cas plugging into the warding, and Jack keeping the portal open, Sam, Dean and Jody are gonna need to go in prepared. They’re prepping their weapons and emergency supplies, ready to go, when Cas asks Jody to stay, too.

“What,” she says, flatly. Dean, watching from the other side of the library, can see exactly how hard her eyes roll. He snorts, nudges Sam to make sure he’s watching too. “Is this some kind of bullshit male chivalry thing?”

“Uh, no,” Cas says, smiles gently and doesn’t back off. Brave guy. “No, it’s not. Jody, it’s, um. Well. You know--” he sighs, starts over. “I was never able to make things right with Claire. What I took from her… I’m never going to be able to make that right.”

And that got significantly more personal than Dean was expecting. He almost feels bad for watching now, but now he can’t stop listening. He thinks of Claire, though, the last time they saw her, _He’s been a big help with the “coming out” bullshit_ and he thinks maybe Cas is wrong.

Cas isn’t Jimmy, but Claire had seemed pleased in her own deflective way that he was in her life, even if it was at the end of a text chain. Cas doesn’t give himself enough credit for _trying._

“But, you and Claire found each other. She has you now,” Cas continues, and Jody softens, eyebrows, lips, shoulders all loosening at once. “If something goes wrong with this rescue, and Kaia isn’t saved? Claire will be devastated, but she’d survive. She already has. But if she loses you both…”

“That’d kill her,” Jody breathes.

“Yeah,” Cas says, and whatever understanding is passing between them, Merle rudely interrupts.

“Castiel. Ready when you are.”

“Thank you,” Cas says to Jody, and Jody just nods which Dean guesses means she’s on board.

Which leaves just him and Sam and Not-Kaia to universe hop.

Yay.

It all goes smoothly, though. Or as smoothly as these things go, anyway.

Cas and Merle lay their hands on the sigils and every ward in the bunker lights up with power. Jack opens the rift, and it holds long enough to for Not-Kaia to step through first.

When Sam and then Dean follow, they wind up in exactly the right place, albeit darker and stormier than it was before. It’s pouring with rain, and lighting flashes every few seconds, bursts of light illuminating their path through the trees.

Kaia stops them from opening fire on a bunch of shadowy creatures with red eyes, and after a tense few minutes the herd passes them by.

“They’re scared,” she says, and Dean doesn’t ask her how Real Kaia is feeling if these horrors are terrified, but then they’re at the camp and she’s dirty and wary but she’s alive.

The storm is rapidly thickening, mist pulling in, almost electrified with the never-ending lightning strikes, and they need to get gone ASAP, but Other-Kaia just stops suddenly.

“I’m not going,” she cries, over the rush of wind, and they can’t stop, they can’t stay to talk her out of it when the fog is coming in faster and faster.

“Go!” She yells, and Dean ain’t gonna wait to be told twice. He grabs Kaia, Real-Kaia, and hauls her back towards the portal.

Sam stumbles through first, then Dean guides Kaia and then they’re warm and dry and Jody is there to catch the kid as she stumbles.

They let her shower. Jack lends her some clean clothes.

It isn’t until Kaia, clean and warm and bundled into one of Jack’s sweaters, says, “What do I do now?” that Dean remembers they found her at an intervention centre.

Thankfully, Jody is a fucking pro at this by now.

“Well,” she says, casually, like she didn’t come here with the sole purpose of bring Kaia home. “If you want. Come back to Sioux Falls? My home?”

“Will Claire be there?” Kaia asks, and that’s just adorable.

“She will,” Jody smiles. “Soon.”

It’s a textbook win - they saved the girl, she’s gonna be adopted by a ragtag family of misfits that will love her for exactly who she is, and Dean knows how much this will mean to Claire.

He’s so distracted by the momentary feel-good that he almost forgot about Merle, the miserable fucking stalker, until they all troupe back into the library for a celebratory clean-up mission and her sour face is still hovering.

“If I cared for a second about saving that girl I guess I’d say this was a victory,” she simpers.

“So you think it worked?” Sam asks. “Kept us off Chuck’s radar?”

“If it hadn’t,” she shrugs. “We’d all be dead. So yeah, I’d say it worke--”

And she dissolves into atoms before she’s got to the last syllable.

//

“Hello, boys.”

Billie is just as intimidating as ever, with he leather coat and the revamped scythe and the general bleeding aura of darkness and power.

She looks at each of them in turn, slow and oh so measured, like she might choose one at random to reap right now, a threat which is amplified by the pile of freshly dusted reaper she steps deliberately over.

After a moment, she locks onto Jack like a shark scenting blood. Strides towards him and the whole room seems to flinch around her.

“Bending the rules already, Jack?”

“B-Billie,” he stammers. “I- I tried to call you.”

“I know,” she says, and though she doesn’t exactly raise her voice it’s a clear admonishment. “I was busy. Can’t say I’m not disappointed though.”

“Disappointed?” Dean says, snaps his eyes back to the dispersing grey cloud on the floor. “You just iced one of your own reapers!”

“Merle had one job. Keep you in line,” Billie says. “She failed. We’re playing a big game here, and we’re only as strong as our weakest players. She had to go.”

Billie doesn’t say it directly to anyone, but that’s a threat if Dean ever heard one. _Do what I say or you’re gone too._ She lets it breathe, lets it sit heavily in the air between them, paces leisurely down the length of the library tables.

“That’s the difference between you and me,” she says as she reaches the end. Turns to stare them down once again. “I see the big picture. I understand that one life means nothing in the grand scheme. That girl,” she says, honing in on Jack again. “You saved from a dying world. You think hers was the only one? They’re all dying. All the worlds. Each and every world but this one.”

“Chuck,” Cas breathes, and his horror is palpable.

“Mmhmm,” Billie nods. “He’s been a busy boy, extinguishing galaxies. Wiping the slate clean. For the end.”

That sounds like Chuck, throwing out all his toys except for the one’s that don’t want to _fucking_ play.

“And what’s _your_ endgame, Billie?” Sam snaps. Deans kinda surprised he kept his mouth shut for so long, even in the face of Death herself. “I mean. You lecture us about how important all this is but we don’t even know what you’re doing! Jack’s gonna kill God, right? Yeah? Great. How? What’s you’re plan?”

Billie narrows her eyes at him. Ripples with ethereal, otherworldly energy.

“When I was a reaper, I believed in the rules,” she says in lieu of an answer. Cuts a scathing look back at Cas when she adds, “But then you killed me. And when I became Death, I inherited Death’s Knowledge. And Death’s Library. And in Death’s Library, everyone has a book. Even God.”

“So God can die?” Dean says, mostly to himself. He remembers old Death saying something similar, maybe, about reaping God, but the memory is bleached vague, distorted by the absolute total dread Dean had felt at the time.

“Everything dies.”

“I don’t understand,” Cas says. “Why would God write the blueprint to his own death?”

“He didn’t,” Billie explains. “The books write themselves.”

Chuck built himself into the framework, she says. Hazard of wanting the universe to be self-sufficient while he went to play in other sandboxes, giving himself an accidental weakness, and Dean is starting to see where this is going.

“So chuck doesn’t know what’s inside the book?”

“No one can read their books,” Billie says, pointedly. “Unless I let them.”

“What about Jack?” Sam asks, warier now. Dean can practically hear the cogs in his head working. “He’s in God’s book?”

Billie nods. “And so are you. I told you Dean, you and your brother have work to do. This is your destiny. You are the Messengers of God.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to watch my post 15x18 related breakdown in real time, I am on [Tumblr](http://disniq.tumblr.com)


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I ended up changing a few bits around in this chapter becasue the episode was a hot mess ~~Thanks Buckleming~~ , but as it's the last one before we step away from canon I'm sure you'll forgive me. 
> 
> Also added the 'fix-it' tag because. Well. You know.

Billie gives them one last _Sit down and shut up_ and then flitters off to whatever ‘big picture’ business she’s orchestrating, leaving them sat on their thumbs all over again.

Dean has fucking had it with higher powers dumping this heavy shit on their laps and leaving them to deal. Dad’s deathbed truthbomb about Sam’s psychic demon crap; the angels signing him and Sam up to be Mike and Luci’s Apocalypse Day Parade dresses; Metatron leading them on about closing the Gates of Hell; Amara pulling their mother from heaven and then peacing the fuck out.

Everything that Chuck has ever fucking done, from bathrobe wearing drunk to blasting Jack from his body with a snap.

And now, this.

“ _Messengers of God_ huh.”

“Yeah,” Sam snorts. “Whatever that means.”

“Yeah, I dunno. Cas?”

Cas shrugs with his whole body. Elbows, shoulders, eyebrows; everything. “Sorry, I don’t know.”

“Well, then I guess we hit the books,” Sam says. He’s already scanning the shelves closest when Dean drops his head to the table with a thump.

Dean never thought he’d miss the original apocalypse, but at least then he had something to do. At this rate, he’ll die of boredom before Chuck is done with his universe purge.

//

All the lore they can find on _Messengers of God_ links back to prophets, and they sure ain’t that.

Sam _hates_ that he can’t place it. Takes it as a personal judgement of his research skills or some shit, and tears through the entire library, then the really old books in storage, the scrolls in the archives.

Dean leaves him to it, happy in his ignorance.

It’s not the first time a cosmic being has thrown a fancy title at them, and maybe that’s Chuck, maybe it ain’t. But Dean has been _The Righteous Man_ , he’s been _The Michael Sword_ , he’s been _The Barrier Between Light and Darkness_. And it was never anything other than petty manipulations masquerading as heroic quests, trying to get them to sacrifice themselves for one cause after another.

Dean’s not going to over-think this one. Not a one of them has a great track record of stellar choices, and Billie has done what they couldn’t - she brought Jack back, and she has a plan to take down Chuck.

Let keep her secrets for now, she’ll have to tell them sooner or later. Honestly, he isn’t sure which would be the better option.

On one hand, they’re nowhere near ready to take on Chuck. He kicked their asses powered down, at full strength he could probably just Thanos-snap them away if he wanted to. The only reason he hasn’t is because he’s still betting on the big Winchesterbowl.

On the other, Dean is stuck in a loop of endlessly refreshing the local, national and global news and the stream of clickbait, politics and fluff stories that are actually really fucking depressing stories dressed in an unconvincing Scooby villain mask is driving him insane.

The world isn’t ending, yet. Dean should log off, take a break. But maybe it is, and it just doesn’t know it yet.

Dean refreshes the page one more time.

//

A weird kind of peace settles around the bunker, with the four of them back here full time. Things would almost be normal, if it wasn’t for the looming threat of God’s very literal wrath.

And the never leaving the bunker.

And the anxiety disorder Dean is developing whenever Jack is in the room.

And the cycle of thoughts in his head, _it’s okay, Cas is keeping an eye on him_ to _He was keeping an eye on him before, too_ and back again, exhausting waves of reassurance, doubt, guilt.

So… maybe not normal at all, actually. But they’ve never really done _normal_ , anyway. Pretending is as close as they’ve ever gotten, and old habits die hard.

It is quiet, though, waiting for something to happen, and maybe that’s what really sets Dean on edge.

“Shit,” Sam says, with feeling. Slams his book shut, runs his hands frustratedly through his princess hair.

“Good news?” Dean asks without looking up from CNN.

“No news!” Sam snaps, like Dean actually wanted an answer. “Nothing on messengers, nothing on Nephilim overpowering God, nothing on the balance of the fucking universe! I- I know you trust her, man, but Billie’s been wrong before and I can’t find a single bit of lore to back up her story.”

Maybe it’s because he’s looking at a story about a blackout in Reno, maybe it’s because Sam spits the word _balance_ like it’s poison, but the hairs on his neck all stand up uncomfortably.

“You’re really stuck on this Amara thing, huh?”

“Honestly kinda surprised that _you_ aren’t, Dean. Aren’t you guys _connected_ or whatever?”

“Ugh,” Dean shudders. “Don’t remind me.”

“Well, ignore it if you want, but I can’t. None of this makes any sense, dude, and if we’d listened to Billie before, she would’a had you _throw yourself in the ocean forever_. I can’t forget that so easy, Dean!”

“So, what,” Dean sighs. Snaps his laptop shut. “You got your panties twisted over Amara? Or Billie? Just so we’re clear.”

“Both!” Sam spits. “I can multitask!”

It’s such a pretentious thing to say, Dean laughs in his face before he can stop it.

Sam’s bitchface intensifies, but Dean sidesteps it by actually turning to look at him head on, spreads his hands placatingly.

“Okay. So, Billie might be wrong. But it was still Chuck that told us about the whole balance of the universe thing, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam sighs. Deflates. “Chuck said if one of them dies, everything dies.”

“Yup. And he ain’t exactly trustworthy, either. He told us he couldn’t kill Jack, remember? About three minutes before he iced him.”

“Yeah,” Sam concedes. Scrubs a hand through his hair again, then across his eyes. “Yeah, I don’t know. The universe was fine when Amara was sealed away. But when Chuck was dying, the friggin’ sun was dying. _But_ \--”

“Could’a been a trick.”

“It could’ve been a trick. And we have no idea where Amara even is while Chuck is doing all of this. Is she helping him? Does she even _know_ \--”

Sam rubs his forehead again - tension headache, probably - then drops his hand on the table, right over Australia, and the map shakes, lets out an ominous buzzing noise.

Sam bangs it again when it doesn’t stop, which makes it louder, but then it kicks up a pitch and it’s not coming from the table at all, it’s coming from below them.

They’re half way down the stairs before the map has stopped juddering.

Dean pulls his gun from his waistband, feels Sam do the same behind him. Stops by the door of the research room, still closed tight but a bright light flashes on the other side, shadows flickering under the door and the low hum of power merges with music, what the _hell_.

Dean braces, because there’s a extremely limited guest list of things that can teleport right into their house and numero uno is actively out to kill them. A quick gesture to Sam with his free hand, _I’ll get the door, you take point_ , and Dean kicks in the door, fully expecting to be blasted to oblivion by God.

It’s somehow weirder than that.

It’s _them_.

Only Sam has a man-bun and a cravat and a friggin’ velvet smoking jacket, and Dean is wearing a polo shirt and dress shoes with no socks. It’s like looking into the worlds preppiest funhouse mirror, and the car! God, the car…

Before Dean’s even processed the plastic monstrosity, the buzzing starts up again, louder than before. The bookshelves shake, the walls tremble, the whole bunker creaks around them.

A pulsating yellow portal burns to life behind their dopplegangers, angry and wild, and then an almighty crashing sound echoes through the room and the portal closes with a pop, taking their doubles and the car with it.

//

Dean’s ears are still ringing when Cas bursts in behind them, to an empty room and two dumbstruck Winchesters.

“What,” he demands, weapon raised, scanning the space for something to stab. “What is happening?”

“Nothing?” Dean answers, and it sounds like a question even to himself. “I don’t think so, anyway, they’re gone--”

“Who’s gone?” Cas says. Checks the room again, then lowers his blade satisfied the danger has passed.

Jack sticks his head around the doorway, frowns at them. “So, we’re safe? I thought--”

He cuts himself off, but the crease between his eyebrows remains. He thought Chuck had come for him, Dean would wager. And it’s too soon, and Jack probably ain’t in a hurry to be burned out of his meatsuit again.

“It’s okay,” Dean says at the same time as Sam says, “We’re good.”

“What happened?” Cas asks again, tucks his blade back into his coat at last.

Dean puts his gun away, too. His heart rate has settled again, now he’s just kinda offended by the shade of green on that awful little car.

“I dunno,” Sam says. “A rift just opened up in the middle of the room, and these two guys climb out of a car and they look just like us--”

“Except _not_ ,” Dean clarifies. That was _not_ him. “And don’t even get me started on the car!”

“Okay,” Cas frowns. “I am not understanding.”

“Yeah, well. Welcome to the club.”

“It’s like they were us, but I guess from another world?” Sam suggests, and yeah. Make sense, kinda.

“But how did they get here?”

“They were running,” rings Billie’s voice, clear and confident, right behind Sam. “Because God was destroying their reality. He’s almost done. Wrapping up those other worlds. And when he is…”

“It’s our turn,” Sam finishes.

“Looks like,” Billie says, grimly. “So we need to be prepared. I have the next step.”

She casts a hard look at Cas, then turns to Jack, by the door.

“I’m ready,” he says, no hesitation. Billie doesn’t smile, exactly, but she looks satisfied.

“Good. The first quest was meant to strengthen your body. Step two is more spiritual in nature.”

“Can you be more specific?” Cas says, and Dean almost wants to laugh at the colossal level of attitude in those five simple words.

“Jack needs to find the Occultum.”

“The Occultum?” Sam repeats. His eyebrows furrow, Dean can practically hear the cogs turning. “Occultum… that’s Latin for _hidden_. Where do we find it?”

“I don’t know,” Billie enunciates, slowly. Talking to an infant. “It’s hidden. Missing, for centuries. It’s sacred, potent.”

Okay, cool. So, “Is it a weapon? How does it work?”

“Not a weapon, per se. But it is powerful,” she says, and then stops like that was any use at all.

“Thanks, big help.”

Billie ignores him. Steps towards Jack, touches his arm in a way that’s might be motherly if she were human.

“Are you ready? Truly?”

“I am,” Jack replies, solemn and serious, like a vow.

“Good,” Billie nods, like she’s accepting it as one. “Because we need to be ready. Be vigilant.”

She fixes her deep, penetrating gaze right at Dean.

“And _not_ stupid.”

//

What follows is a comedy of errors that even Shakespeare would be proud of.

They can’t find anything on the Occultum in their library, which means Cas calling in a favour with his pal the shaman creep. Ugh. One ominously non-specific IOU later, they know that whatever this thing is, it’s divine.

It has a pretty standard backstory; gathered dust in a temple until it was looted, sold on the black market to some rich family, passed down as an heirloom. But then it gets interesting.

The family’s kid gets sick, beyond-medical-help kinda sick, and these rich hoarders who can’t take no for an answer turn to a faith healer. An attractive, angelic, _expensive_ faith healer.

Sister Jo is where they left her; a Kiwanis hall in Minnesota, living the simple life of modest do-gooder so long as you ignore her Gucci boots and the fact that she’s literally counting bills when they arrive.

She doesn’t deny having the Occultum, which is refreshing, but also doesn’t help them until they pull out the angel blades. Turns out Jo was buddy-buddy with Sam’s demon ex and, holy shit, Donatello was right, they really don’t do anything simple.

They had an opportunity knocks thing going on under the table, she says. And, boy, did Ruby have an opportunity, she says. She stashed it, she says. And then you stabbed her, she says. It’s hidden, she says. In Hell.

Which is just fucking _great_.

Sammy the teenage witch has got them covered, though - they still have Rowena’s spell that portals them straight down the ladder.

Cas gets pissy at them for trusting Jo, but it’s not like they have any other options here, so Cas is relegated to maintaining the spell while him and Sam nosedive into the sulphur. Again.

It should be easy enough to drop in, ask Rowena to get some minions on it and leave, but of course it isn’t. Rowena isn’t there, she’s busy throwing a welcome party, which is so perfectly on brand Dean’s not even mad.

He _is_ mad that they have to ask some rando demon to take them to her. He’s outright fucking pissed when rando leads them to a trap, instead.

Maybe Cas had a point about not trusting Jo, after all.

Dean’s just thinking, as they board their Magical Mystery Tour back home, that at least they’ll get a breather while they work on plan D for Dead-end, but then they land right where they started in the library and it’s not Cas hovering over the spell, it’s Jack.

“Guys, you’e back,” he says, but Dean’s not listening because Cas is slumped over in an armchair, body limp, face slack, and so much like that reaper’s apartment years ago when Cas was fragile and human and _dead._

“What the hell?” Dean manages, his brain stuck in a loop of _no no no no no_ before he’s even stepped forwards.

“He’s dead,” Jack says, every muscle in Dean’s body clenching before he qualifies, “Kind of. For now.”

“What?!” Sam snaps.

“Cas went to the empty,” Jack explains, eyebrows scrunched the same way Cas’ do and, fuck, Dean feels like he’s having an out of body experience. Dizzy and sick and frozen, useless. “Hopefully to find ruby, hopefully to find out where this Occultum thing is located. Hopefully.”

“That’s way too many ‘hopefully’s!” Sam shouts, so sudden that Jack jumps slightly.

It spurs Dean, too. “Bring him back! Now!”

To his credit, Jack doesn’t hesitate.

It doesn’t ease the awful, tense ache squeezing the back of Dean neck, the base of his skull, until the grace settles and Cas gasps in a breath and it relieves the building pressure in Dean’s chest too.

Cas hacks his way through whatever is resettling into his body, grace and spite.

He coughs out a surprised, “You made it back,” somewhere in the middle, and it’s enough in the moment, with the adrenaline still frantically coursing his veins, that Dean can’t rein himself in in time.

“Yeah, and so did you. You’re a fucking idiot, by the way!”

Sam must be pissed too, at least if his vindicating little huff is anything to go by.

“What if this hadn’t worked?” he asks.

“But it did,” Cas replies, hoists himself up in the chair like he isn’t still panting. “Ruby said the Occultum was never in Hell.”

“You actually talked to Ruby?”

“Yes,” Cas says, curtly. Raises his chin defiantly, like he does when he’s daring Dean to comment. “And I got the location. Am I still an idiot?”

“Well, yeah!” Dean shouts, and some of the comforting old anger seeps through the cracks. “We’re supposed to be past this, man! We’re supposed to be done sacrificing ourselves for other peoples’ cosmic plans!”

Cas’ scowl melts into something soft and sad, eyes big and earnest, and Dean can’t read whatever is written there, but it doesn’t stop him from trying.

He holds Cas’ look for a long moment before Sam pointedly clears his throat.

“Well,” he says, archly. “We should probably go, since we have that location and all.”

//

The location, it turns out, is a pristine church in the middle of a field. Because America. And also because a demon hiding something in Hell is predictable, but hiding a divine object in a church apparently isn’t.

It’s quiet. Suspiciously so.

“You sure this is the place?” Dean asks.

“Ruby was very specific,” Cas replies.

“Yeah, well. So was Jo.”

Still nothing around them moves. No people. No birds, or bunnies, or friggin’ cicadas. Nothing.

“I, um. I know I haven’t been doing this as long as you,” Jack says, following close behind. “But. Doesn’t this seem a little easy?”

“Yeah,” Sam confirms for the kid. Tries the door anyway.

It rattles uselessly against the frame, locked.

And of course, that’s when the clichés continue, because the place is guarded by _fucking hellhounds_. Fuck Ruby, Dean remembers why he always hated the conniving demon bitch.

It takes a second to pull the lockpick from his pocket, a few seconds longer to click the tumblers into place. It’s not his best work, but considering the echo of snarling hellhounds and the tremor in his fingers he thinks he does okay.

Anyhow, they’re in, and Sam barricades the door and then things get real Indiana Jones. Riddles and following moonlight silhouettes and floorboard hidey holes and, when they pull the silver orb out it’s soft velvet bag and into the light, _more_ fucking riddles.

“In order to be in the Occultum,” Cas translates, squinting at the ornate little ping-pong ball, “the Occultum must be in you.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

Cas shrugs, hands the silver snitch to Jack and looks around hopelessly for any clues or hints or fucking _anything_.

“Guys!” Sam yells, over the rattling and barking. “I can’t hold them forever!”

“Working on it,” Dean hollers back, and when he turns around the Occultum is gone. “Wh- Where’s the thing?”

“Oh,” Jack says. “I ate it.”

“You _what_?”

“Well, it said it had to be in me, so--”

“No! Spit it out!”

“It’s fine,” Jack smiles. “Nothing’s happeni--”

And then he fucking _implodes,_ bright white light and then, poof, kid’s gone.

“Jack?!” Cas yells, the echo reverberating back around the tiny room the only answer.

“What’s happening?!” Sam shouts from where he’s turned to barricade the door more solidly with his shoulder. “What’s going on?”

“I- I dunno,” Cas stammers, casts a panicked look around but nothing has changed except that Dean is pacing the three steps between the alter and the pew. “I guess we wait to see if Jack comes back and--”

“ _If_ jack comes back? What do you mean, _if Jack comes back_?!”

“I don’t know what’s happening here, Dean. I- I had no idea this was gonna involve ingesting some magic sphere and then disappearing!”

“That’s the fucking problem!” Dean snaps. Throws his arms out just for something to do with the impotent energy buzzing through him. “We’re being sent into these mythical fucking quests blindfolded, man! We need to--”

He’s cut off by the floating, humming ball of light that seeps out of the cross on the wall. Sam, too, stares captivated at the meandering little spark as it drifts down to settle on the dusty wood, and he’s knocked flying when the hellhounds finally break through.

Cas pulls his blade, Dean goes for his gun, but the hounds take two lurching strides and are vaporised in a flash of golden-white grace and when it clears, there is Jack, curled foetal and unmoving on the floor.


End file.
